Category: Comics

Ongoing Investigations: Case #134

1 Comment

I started watching Ashita no Nadja on and off in between other shows, I’ve seen four so far. It is a shojo series with a small following. I’ve always been curious about it because it has a It also boasts a fabulous opening. Nadja is a young orphan girl who receives a mysterious package on her 13th birthday which contains a letter revealing her mother is still alive. This sets her off an adventure where she joins a traveling troupe and becomes a dancer, as she searches for her mother she meets various people along the way including many suitors, and she is pursued by villains trying to stop her progress. Nadja is a hard-working dear girl, the troupe is a colorful bunch, and there is a blond prince plus a phantom thief so far! This is such a children’s wish fulfillment show and it is utterly charming in its execution. It also has a bit of a Masterpiece Theater feel. I’m looking forward to watching more.

With a morbid curiosity I decide to brave the first 4 episodes of the 2011 reboot of Thundercats. The original Thundercats is distinctly one of those show that you might have liked as a kid but does not age well at all. The new series is produced by Warner Bros. Animation but the animation is done by Studio 4°C so I also watched for the tenuous anime connection. But make no mistake while some of the visual fair has an anime feel this is very much an American cartoon. It is closer to Avatar: The Last Airbender than Bleach. And that is not a bad thing. The story telling for children of all ages make entertainment that has the ability to stand up over time. Some of it dips into the just for kids cache at times but overall it is a fairly smart remake. The reboot wisely keeps many of the things that people remember fondly about the original and jettisons some of the more frankly stupid parts at the same time. I mean Snarf is now a clever pet as opposed to his old annoying nursemaid persona which I am sure earns the show a metric ton of goodwill. The first episode setup the main cast, had them soundly beaten, and gets them on the run. I will say that Mumm-Ra plan that involved assault mecha, a turncoat, AND a Trojan horse seemed a bit overkill but it does show you that he is a credible threat. The next two episode have been fairly entertaining with a Moby Dick story and the tale living for the day. I think I will keep watching to see where it goes. Be warned no matter how this series turns out it will  be a furry generation engine like the original. This is just an unavoidable fact.

Continue reading →

Ongoing Investigations: Case #123

Leave a comment

Let me be up front and tell you that while Level Up does touch on the topic of video games it is not nearly as much about the games as you might first suspect. Video games come up and they are used as a metaphor but they are one of several metaphors used in the book. It is really the story of how a boy grows up with the expectations of his parents while tying to balance it against his own desires to be happy. We see Dennis Ouyang go through his life oscillating between hiding himself in video games which he loves and beings quest to becoming a gastroenterologist despite the fact that he has no interest in the job. After his farther dies and he gets kicked out of college he is visited by four little angels that act as nagging guilty consciences that demand that he fulfill his destiny of becoming a doctor. So he whips himself back into shape and is slowly but surely is on his way to satiating the angels. He makes friends and even finds love but he is constantly plagued by the fact that he is going into a career he hates. Despite the addition of the angels it is an extremely relatable story. We have all expectations place on us by the people who raised us and know how they can conflict with our attempts live our own lives. The more the exceptions placed on you the more the book will speak to you. Dennis and his friends sell the story by being delightful characters that draw you in. The art simple and has a very independent comic vibe but it is expressive while maintaining a warm feeling. Level Up is a nice one book story with a fairly important lesson for anyone who is lacking direction their life or remembers what that feeling is like.

The first chapter where we see Dennis’s failed attempt to get a Nintendo for Christmas might be the most relatable scene of the book, you wanted him to get it but knew he wouldn’t. And it is just as easy to struggle with Dennis as he weighs his father’s desires against his own changing perspective. It said it all to me when Dennis’s mother told him “Love is for people. Not work.” Each generation in each culture deals with this difference in thinking, but the Asian American experience depicted here should be very familiar, I know it mirrors my friend’s stories. But I think what was refreshing about this story is the balance it strikes in the end proving you don’t have to cast off your family completely to be who you are. Though I have to say that parents might need this lesson more than kids. Gene Luen Yang brings these lessons in with video games, humor, and great pacing. Sparse words are needed as Thien Pham perfectly conveys everything you need to know visually. A perfect collaboration.

Continue reading →

Ongoing Investigations: Case #118

Leave a comment

I finally finished up Part 1 of Saint Seiya: Lost Canvas thanks to Crunchyroll. The destined for tragedy friendship between Tenma, Alone, and Sasha and the fate of not just the world of Gods but also man maintains its level of melodrama very well. And the violence and battles that the series is so well known for is here at an enjoyable rate. It doesn’t come off like Saint Seiya for the modern viewer, it is just another line in the Saint Seiya world which is fine by me. However, this doesn’t make it very new viewer friendly as the series is filled with the familiar faces of the Gold Saints with little explanation. New additions though get a good amount of screen time like the amusing Yato, totally cool Yuzuriha, and of course head strong Tenma. These three are a lot of fun as a team, though nearing the later half of the series we don’t see them as much. However, the final episode promises excellent moments to come. Part 1 ends at a turning point, but by no means has any closure. I’m looking forward to Part 2 which has recently started up.

One of the main purposes of Ongoing Investigations is to talk about things that might not warrant a whole article but show what Narutaki and I read and watch outside the articles we write. It is also where we talk about things we utterly hate. And so I talk about Vampire Cheerleaders which has to be one of the worst thing I have read in recent memory. It is actually two stories in one with the first part being the titular Vampire Cheerleaders who are a squad of catty blood sucking mean girls who take a shy goody two-shoes girl and turn her into an undead ho to fill a hole in their squad. For an OEL manga it is remarkably like its Japanese counterparts in the sad fact that it is one of those racy comedies that it is smutty enough that it feels it does not need a good plot but never quite racy enough to be good as pornography. So you are inundated with cheap fan service strung together with lame jokes that never goes all the way. One of the characters actually uses the phrase “riding the meal missile to Mars” as a euphemism for losing your virginity. Theoretically none of this has to be this bad. I always thought that Exploitation Now did this formula right but I found every one of the jokes in Vampire Cheerleaders fell flat due to annoying characters and tepid delivery. After the main feature and the threat of a sequel there is the bonus story called the Paranormal Mystery Squad. While this was not as bad as Vampire Cheerleaders it is still light years away from good. The Paranormal Mystery Squad starts of as all girl squad mostly so they can be the PMS girls which is a joke I thankfully missed at first but the comic helpfully beat me over the head with. The PMS is a monster slaying service that is hounded by a PETA analog (cleverly named PETM) with a nerdy overseer who wants them to capture monsters alive. One of the girls fails to heed the words of Friedrich Nietzsche and winds up becoming a werewolf. This causes conflict in the group and leads to the stories’ oh so charming title that I will not torture you with besides saying it is quite awful. In fact the whole thing is quite awful. The art in Paranormal Mystery Squad was slightly more detailed but the character designs were less attractive. It is very obviously try to sell itself as manga as it reads right to left despite its American origin. But in the end it does not really matter if it is a bad manga or a bad comic; all you have to know is that it is just bad.

Continue reading →