Category: Supernatural

The Boy and the Beast: Heart Of Sword

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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.

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Platinum Beginning

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hisui_icon_4040 Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata is one of the few series that broke through that glass ceiling to become a mainstream success. It never got to the level of Sailor Moon or Dragonball Z but it was a title that would regularly appear in magazine articles, became the object of TV controversy, the subject of parody, and regularly appear on the list best-selling manga in the US. It even got the standard rumors about there being Death Note TV series and movies being made in Hollywood. It was series that had an unstoppable momentum that even got it a new live action TV series in Japan and is still discussed today.

With a mega success like that the natural question is what would the duo as a follow-up. It turns out that their next work was Bakuman. It was a very meta manga about a pair of friends trying to make it in the manga industry. It was undoubtedly a success but it was not the juggernaut that Death Note was. Bakuman got an anime, a drama, and sold well but while it is a show that has name recognition on anitwitter it has no where the same cache of its predecessor at an anime convention among the average attendee.

Once again Ohba and Obata are working together on Platinum End. It is a good deal closer to the supernatural mixture of supernatural suspense and horror that made Death Note a success as opposed to the relatively more realistic comedy of Bakuman. The question on everyone’s lips is how does this compare to their last two hits.

narutaki_icon_4040 Shonen Jump has been bringing out a lot of new material lately. It is exciting to see this team back together to do something more with the supernatural which gives Takeshi Obata’s art time to shine and let’s Tsugumi Ohba play with no-limits in the story.

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Manga of the Month: The Morose Mononokean

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The Morose Mononokean (不機嫌なモノノケ庵)
by Kiri Wazawa

narutaki_icon_4040 When a yokai attaches itself to you, who ya gonna call?

Ashiya find himself with an unintended supernatural companion after he helps a yokai one night. While in the high school infirmary, he spies a strange help wanted flier for an exorcist and decides to call. While on the call, Ashiya is asked for his location and then told to simply open the nurse’s office door. Instead of walking in to the hall, he ends up in a tea room with the aloof Mononokean Master Abeno.

After coming to understand his mistake with the first yokai he encountered, Ashiya becomes more sensitive to their requests. By the end of the first volume, Ashiya has become an apprentice to Abeno as he deals with yokai in the area and takes on requests from clients.

The stories of the yokai are tender portraits which tend toward melancholy as we come to understand them and their past connections. Ashiya’s naive helpfulness and Abeno’s matter-of-fact attitude lighten things up from time to time. And it is clear that mysterious Abeno has many secrets to share as the series goes on.

Wazawa’s yokai designs are well-crafted and have a tendency towards dramatic immensity. I’m looking forward to what the next will look like.

Following in the tradition of many great series about yokai, The Morose Mononokean adds a touch of humor and two more excellent personalities to the genre.

~ kate