Category: Action

Manga of the Month: Seven Deadly Sins

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Nanatsu no Taizai (七つの大罪) by Nakaba Suzuki

Everyone is waiting for a new hero to arrive. Monkey D Luffy is a superstar but he is only one man. Ichigo Kurosaki and Naruto Uzumaki are close to retiring. There are some B and C level celebrities like Soul Eater Evans and Natsu Dragneel but they don’t have that top-tier of star power that classic shonen champions like Goku or Himura Kenshin had. There are a few empty seats on the round table of shonen money makers and the manga industry eagerly awaits the paladins who will fill those chairs.

Nanatsu no Taizai is a new series from Weekly Shonen Magazine that is attempting to gain membership to this illustrious line up. With a fantasy setting and high-powered knights it looks like it could be a viable contender.

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Manga of the Month: Laughter in the End of the World

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Laughter in the End of the World (終末のラフター)
by Yellow Tanabe

This is Yellow Tanabe’s first serial, albeit a short one, since finishing up Kekkaishi. It follows a brother and sister as they wander an Earth which was inhabited my demons many years before after a great disaster.

When we meet Luca and Haru they are entering a town which is being tormented by a demon living in the hills who demands sacrifice. Luca bears the mark of a demon on his cheek but he also hunts them and offers his service to the mayor.

There is a lot of darkness in this series which is enhanced by creative monster designs and Ms. Tanabe’s excellent use of black and shadow. The secrets of the world definitely have an horror-edge to them and in such a short format most of them remain steeped in mystery which has its own allure.

A Pair of Angels, A Pair of Devils

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Certain shows get this unfair reputation because like Icarus they dared fly too high at the wrong time. A show like Turn A Gundam played with the Gundam formula in a way that was a bit too radical to be appreciated at the time but in reflection is now well regarded as innovate and enjoyable (if a bit strange). Distance helped prove that the show had a good deal of depth and innovation with the changes it made to the “standard” Gundam show. But not every re-imagining is this diamond in the rough that is unfairly judged to a contemporary audience only to fully be understood by a later audience. Some shows just take what was awesome or endearing about the original and totally amputate it in an attempt to modernize a show. In trying to cater to a new audience they totally miss what made the original so enjoyable.

Dirty Pair Flash is a classic example of just not getting the point when it comes to a remake. I would venture to say that Dirty Pair Flash is more infamous for just how much it is hated by original Dirty Pair fans than anything about the show itself. They radically altered the characters designs when they made Dirty Pair Flash so that alone can easily turn hardcore fans against all things being equal. But the fact of the matter is that Dirty Pair Flash is just inferior to the original. The main purpose of this article it to determine why that is. The easy point to state is that Dirty Pair Flash fails as a successor to the legacy. The harder question is why does it fail.

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