Category: Fantasy

The Boy and the Beast: Heart Of Sword

Leave a comment

hisui_icon_4040 One of the problems with success can be that it sets a baseline that can be very hard to live up to. That makes sense. When you have a big hit audiences often don’t just want what the liked with a twist. They want your next work to be bigger, better, deeper, broader, and richer. Anything less can be seen as a failure or step backwards. It can also lead to sequels and follow-up works that overreach their bounds trying to outdo their simpler predecessor. It often leads to big bloated affairs that are merely a pale imitation of what worked. J. D. Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye or Dave Chappelle and Chappelle’s Show are prime examples where an artist was so successful that they run away from the spotlight out of fear that they could not follow-up their big profile success.

Mamoru Hosoda has a lot of high-profile successes. I actively have to rack my brain to think of negative reviews for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars and all of his films are practically magnets for awards. He is a name that often get brought up when people ask who the next Hayao Miyazaki will be. Heck, even we brought up that idea on the blog. That means lots of eyes are all over whatever he does comparing it what he has done before, what all the best animators in Japan are doing, as well as just putting up his work against the best animation from around the world. You don’t really get that sort of critical analysis if you’re doing the latest Jewelpet movie. This can put a lot of pressure on a director and a movie.

If anyone can live up to that heavy burden it would be Mamoru Hosoda. The real question is not if Hosoda has the potential to overcome this wall of expectations. It is rather can this particular movie do it?

narutaki_icon_4040 The Boy and the Beast marks a departure from Mamoru Hosoda’s other original theatrical releases. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, and Wolf Children were written by or co-written with Satoko Okudera in which Mr. Hosoda worked on the concept and helmed the director’s chair. In the Boy and the Beast Mr. Hosoda also became its sole writer.

Continue reading →

Manga of the Month: Wolfsmund

Leave a comment

Wolfsmund (狼の口 ヴォルフスムント)
by Mitsuhisa Kuji
Wolfsmund

narutaki_icon_4040 Wolfsmund spins a tale from mid-17th century Europe centering around the St. Gotthard Pass (a fortress nicknamed Wolfsmund) in the Alps and the ensuing Swiss peasant rebellions. The story takes us from the whispered words of unrest through (so far) all-out assault on the odious fortress known as Wolfsmund.

There are many character threads being pulled in different directions by the master of the fortress, Wolfram, and the hope of the peasant cause, Walter, son of Wilhelm Tell. Walter runs as hot as Wolfram runs cold and that distinction becomes more and more pronounced with each passing death. But Wolfram emerges as the more interesting character of the story despite Walter’s role as would-be hero. Wolfram is established early on as a fascinating, but truly villainous, character and nothing about the series suggests a heroic happy-ending for the rest of the cast.

Wolfsmund is incredibly violent in a hundred different ways. In an odd twist, scenes of the fortress being attacked are actually less gruesome than many earlier, smaller, attempts to snuff out rebels. Not to mention the truly vile and disturbing methods of Wolfram himself.

In the hands of Mitsuhisa Kuji, Wolfsmund’s emerges as a brutal historical fantasy with razor-sharp art. From harrowing scenes of people climbing the mountains in an attempt to skirt the pass to Wolfram’s unnerving calm as he quietly questions travelers, the reputation of Wolfsmund as a place without mercy and a master who is beguiling in how frightening he is is executed to perfection.

~ kate

Manga of the Month: The Heroic Legend of Arslan

Leave a comment

The Heroic Legend of Arslan (アルスラーン戦記)
by Hiromu Arakawa and Yoshiki Tanaka

narutaki_icon_4040 Finally, the first volume is coming out in print in August! So it is a perfect time to talk up this epic fantasy from the creator of Full Metal Alchemist, based on the novel series from the author of Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

Young Prince Arslan, adept with a sword but more of a thinker, is the son of an undefeated warrior king. The king and queen look upon their son with coldness and disappointment. But when the country is overtaken by a neighboring theocracy after a disastrous battle, everyone’s fate is in Arslan’s hands as he and a few loyal retainers plot to retake their homeland.

Much like in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the rivals in this series are more of tacticians than soldiers. And much like LotGH there is a huge cast of fascinating characters, many more bad-ass than the next.

The story is based in part on Persian myth which gives a twist on the typical fantasy setting we’re used to seeing.

Ms. Arakawa’s precision in action and anatomy really shines in this series. From grandiose, and graphic, battle scenes to the horses character’s ride, her artwork is perfectly suited to pages of intrigue and war.

Politics and action blend together in Heroic Legend of Arslan to create a sweeping fantasy everyone should be reading.

~ kate