Category: Ongoing Investigations

Ongoing Investigations: Case #187

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Cross Manage is an interesting choice for a new manga to appear in Shonen Jump Alpha. Right off the bat it is a sports manga. While the Japanese love sports manga it is consistently one of the worst selling genres in the U.S. So I am slightly surprised by Viz deciding to run with a lacrosse manga in the online publication. I’m not saying it is a horrible idea. If your going to try to test the waters with an unpopular genre than a lower risk medium like an online magazine is definitely the way to go. Plus the only way that sports manga will ever succeed in the US is if a title is there to change people’s mind. It might not be Cross Manage but at least Cross Manage is getting a chance to see if it could be that manga.

The other unusual factor is that it is about a girl’s lacrosse team with a male manager. So far it seems to be in a general vein of a shonen sports manga only the genders of the cast have been flipped. This is hardly the first manga to do that but there are somethings that makes it stand out from your mainstream sport manga that does this. The first is that the team hardly seems to be moe girls. We only really see Misora but I am getting the impression that the lacrosse team falls more into the mold of standard shonen roles than moe character roles.

So that means that the standard BL support for a sport series is pretty much torpedoed. There might be additional male characters besides Sakurai but the cast is not the normal smorgasbord of hot guys waiting to be paired up like it usually is. I’m not saying that girls can’t get aboard a show without guys to ship. If the female characters are good I am sure it can easily gain a female fanbase. But it will not have the automatic fujoshi fanbase your standard shonen sports manga would have.

At the same time you don’t have the standard K-On! with lacrosse outfits audience as well. So I am left wondering who (if anyone) will latch onto this series. It is not like there is nothing to like about the manga. The characters seem fun and the lacrosse is hardly an overused sport for manga. I will say the plot, characters, and even art style almost seem a bit more Shonen Sunday than Shonen Jump but maybe that is just me.

I have to say I was impressed with one minor factor. Sakurai is very clearly afraid of girls. He goes out of his way to avoid contact with women all together. You have to be particularly dense to miss that point. They show it constantly. The thing is no one directly says it. None of his friends go, “Man that Sakurai sure is gynophobic. He has been afraid of women for as long as I have known him.” I know that some people have a problem with modern manga being a bit too heavy of the tell and not the show. This nicely proves that is not always the case even in a simple sports manga.

I don’t think I would have casually guessed girl’s lacrosse manga as what replaced Barrage in Alpha even if you had given me 100 guesses. So I am very curious to see how this pans out the U.S. and Japan. It could be a quickly forgotten fluke or it just might slightly shake up the world of shonen sport manga. Only time will tell.

I couldn’t have been more excited to hear a sports manga would be appearing in Shonen Jump Alpha! I’ve been hoping for something like this, but honestly I know how far most American publish turn away from sports titles. In addition, Cross Manage also ended up being a rather unexpected story for Jump.

Sakurai starts the manga in the photography club and we quickly learn that he has been making his way through the clubs at school without much passion for any. Still he is determined to find something but out right rejects sports as an option. I found him likeable and root worthy as it is hinted at that he got a bad injury that has put him off playing sports despite a love for them.

Misora is a basically energetic and happy character, but she doesn’t feel one-dimensional. If I could complain about anything, it’s be Sakurai basically learning how to hit the ball in Lacrosse in under 5-minutes. He then proceeds to show Misora, who’s been practicing nonstop, how to do it right. It just felt a little patronizing towards her. On the other hand, it fleshes out his competence with sports and again makes us wonder about his refusal to play.

What is most interesting to me in this setup is that Sakurai can’t become a sports star if we are focused on a girl’s Lacrosse team. And that rather excites me. Lately I’ve seen more series focusing on or at least highlighting super awesome managers or coaches so this could follow in that line.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #186

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So there have been a lot of talk about CBS’s Elementary ever since it was announced. There have even been some harsh warnings from BBC’s Sherlock staff on the concept of the show. Personally, I was looking forward to, at the very least, Lucy Liu as Watson. Finally, last night we were able to see for ourselves just how this NYC-based Holmes would fare.

This version of Sherlock is after all of his adventures across the pond and rehab; they were really able to sell me on this premise. He is still that aloof, detached observer but he can stop, pause, and realize people have feelings. That doesn’t restrict him once he is on a roll as things start clicking in his brain but he is also able to apologize.

Waston holds her own happily. At first she is understandably dragged along into Sherlock’s crazy but finds herself curious and capable of investigation. Her training as a doctor and a companion for recovering addicts allows her lots of insights. In fact, Sherlock and her go toe to toe rather well when analyzing each other.

One thing I’m curious to see is how well they can create a platonic friendship between these two. With the exception of their first meeting, I thought the first episode did an excellent job of it. But I also think this will be one of the harder aspects to keep up, it seems very difficult for television series to not add sexual tension between two good-looking people. But I earnestly hope they can do so here.

The first mystery is a murder, my (everyone’s?) favorite kind! It had good twists if slightly predictable ones at first. However the final conclusion was fantastic and Sherlock’s roundabout way of getting to the point made my jaw drop. I won’t take issue with the criminal admitting guilt to Sherlock privately out of confidence (a staple of the genre) as long as it doesn’t happen every time.

Random note, I was really impressed with that subway scene. That could not have been easy to film!

Natsuyuki Rendezvous was an interesting series in the fact that I think I saw just as many people proudly claim that they stopped watching the series as I saw enjoying the ending. Which is really a shame because it was a fine show that had a very refreshingly mature look at relationships, love, and selfishness and their interconnected nature. If anything I think a lot of the disconnect had to do with people Natsuyuki Rendezvous to be a different show. A show that it never wanted to be nor should have been.

First of all I am a little perplexed by people who were caught off guard by Atsushi being so prevalent in the series. I think Narutaki put it best when she said, “I can’t understand how anyone would hear the premise that the protagonists romantic interest is being haunted by her ex-husband that only he can see and NOT see how the ghost is going to be a prominent character.” In my opinion it is like being perplexed why they talk about the robots so much in Gundam. I don’t think Rokka and Ryosuke are ever ignored in the series. They just share the title of main character with Atsushi.

Second of all I am greatly perplexed by people who don’t seem to understand that selfishness and love are not mutually exclusive. On a certain level some of us wish to believe that absolute pure love means that you will always put the needs of those you love before your own. While this can be a noble sentiment reality shows us that first off the bat there are few people who are that are so buddha-like that they can shed their selfishness for another. You will be surprised how selfless you can be when you are in love but a selfish core remains within all of us.

I am also a little bit concerned by exactly how selfless they want Atsushi to be. It is not as if Rokka was cursing him on his deathbed. His attachment (no matter how selfish at times) to a woman he still loves and still loves him is perfectly understandable. Much like Kyoko Otonashi part of Rokka’s appeal is her devoted nature. It is only natural for Atsushi to somewhat greedily wish to have his own life back. It is not like a large portion of Atsushi does not wish to just see Rokka happy and free. But Atsushi is still human with all the frailties of such.

If you ask my opinion weighing in at only 11 episodes I don’t see any reason not to watch Natsuyuki Rendezvous unless you just dislike romantic dramas. It is a nice slightly supernatural love story for adults. It is a series that proves that letting go is an easy concept to embrace but a far harder concept to execute.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #185

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Although readers love number scores in turn reviewers can grow to hate them mostly because they lack any amount of nuance. It is far more important why you gave something a 7 out of 10 than the mere fact that you did. But with some reviews a number score would be utterly meaningless. What is appealing and unappealing, what works and what goes astray, and what attracts and repels people are so subtle that only a full review can give you a good appreciation of the product. Forest really is a visual novel that personifies that fact. It is a game that I would say could easily be a 9 out of 10 for one of my friends but a 4 out of 10 for another and for the same reasons.

The thing is love it or hate it you have to give it to Forest for really trying to push the boundaries of the types of stories you can tell with the medium. When I first looked at the game I had to wonder how much of the complex narrative was a pretentious attempt at playing like the big boys of art and how much was legitimate higher story telling. In the end it is all fairly well executed attempts at creating a layered story with a good deal of symbolism and threaded stories tied together with a dash of gorgeous surrealism. The story takes the western children’s stories and creates a fantasy realm inside Shinjuku that tests a group of very broken people.

The clearest example of the style of story telling comes with the story selection. In each chapter there are usually 3 or four stories you need to read to progress. They are presented as leaves of a tree with dates on them. The leaves come in three different colors. The gray dead leaves are set entirely in the real world. There is never anything magical going on and they contain the most conventional pieces of storytelling. Then there are green leaves that talk about the world of the Forest. Here things are a mixture of the mundane and mystical. What is real, what is imaginary, and what is magical can be tricky to discern as all three realms can interact seamlessly. There are also red leaves that deal with the Game of the Forest. Everything here is totally metaphorical. There are no traces of the real world and everything is shrouded in symbolism and mystery.

You might be asking yourself at this point why did I make such a big fuss at the beginning if this game is so complex and layered. The thing is as many things as there are to enjoy about the game there are to hate about it. Heck most of them are the same things. All that layered story telling can be just as off-putting as it is fascinating. Thankfully near the end there are some major revelations are thrown on the table in a rather concrete manner so it is not all guess-work and symbolism. But that does not really happen until three-quarters of the way through. Until then you are left to swim through some very tough reading with the mere promise that things will be explained later on. This is not James Joyce’s Ulysses but it is hardly something you can read while doing something else at the same time. If you called it pretentious I would disagree with you but I would not say that you wrong either.

Also there is a lot of sex. And most of it is rather unnerving. It is never gory or bizarre. It is just that it all involves very emotionally damaged people having sex with the oddly uncomfortable sensation that comes with it. Sometimes the scenes are there to give a greater insight into the characters and story and sometimes they are there for mostly fetishistic reasons.  This is far more than just a “put it in”  game but with the amount of sex involved you would not be a fault to assume that at first.

In the end it all comes down to how much you wish to climb that mountain. There is a definite reward at the end but it is hardly an easy climb to the top. If you are a hardcore story driven visual novel fans this is worth checking out just to how you complex a story you can tell if that is your goal. No one will ever praise or accuse Tokimeki Memorial of being art house but you could legitimately but that label on Forest. But for anyone else there are far better titles to start with. Sometimes you don’t need to scale Everest for some entertainment.

ParaNorman was one of the animated films I was looking forward to most this year and it didn’t disappoint. If anything, it exceeded everything in its trailer.

It is the story of Norman an 11-year-old boy in the town of Blithe Hollow a place obsessed with its 300-year-old witch execution. Norman has the power to see ghosts so it is no surprise that when the witch’s curse threatens the town, he is the only one capable of stopping it.

The animation and graphic stylings are a knock-out in this movie. From the deep shadows to the bright highlights, ParaNorman paints it macabre world in a fun way. The little details really make it feel thoughtful, like Norman’s room or the threads on the clothing. And be sure to watch through to the end of the credits to see a little time lapse video of an artist creating the Norman puppet.

ParaNorman’s humor and the topics it explores give it a lot of punch. There are bright moments of slap-stick and morbid chuckles throughout. The Puritan zombies being terrified of modern American culture was a fantastic jab. Norman’s problems of being bullied and his alienation from those around him are depicted with sensitivity and heartbreak that felt like it could only come from those who have been there. Similarly, bullied Neil who befriends Norman feels like so much like someone you know.

It is a really special movie, my favorite animated of the year so far, and I can’t wait to watch it again!

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

Continue reading →