Category: Video Games

Ongoing Investigations: Case #190

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I’m pretty excited that we are finally getting Initial D 5th Stage! As always the opening set the right tone. I liked the manga-styled beginning complete with sound effects that transformed into the CG cars we are now accustomed to.

Eps. 1-2 throw you right in so don’t expect much of a refresher course. We are given brief glimpses of Project D’s next rivals in Kanagawa which they say is the final part in a grand plan, Ryosuke appears to be going in a little blind but he seems to be keeping things under his hat as usual. The AE86 has been getting an upgrade plus Takumi seems determined to learn to steer with one hand. On other fronts, Takumi’s new love interest appears only to rip into him thanks to a misunderstanding.

The imposters of Takumi and Keisuke swaggering around was a fun and light way to start the season. Of course I was very excited as Keisuke’s first appearance is him calling those dudes out! Though it makes for little actual racing in the first episode.

But the uphill battle in the second installment started off nicely with Keisuke taking on another EVO. His opponent is on edge, just waiting for Keisuke to do something crazy, but as time winds by you can see how tightly wound the guy waiting is. Too bad we have to wait a few weeks to find out how this plays out.

I enjoyed it ending with Ryosuke saying a “street specialist” has to be a little bit reckless. Keisuke is nothing if not reckless.

I recently talked about Cross Manage and I mentioned it very much feels like a Shonen Sunday manga in Jump. Not to be outdone Nanatsu no Taizai, the new Sunday manga feels very much like it taken out of Jump. It does make one wonder what is exactly going on there. Are both magazines playing with courting their rivals’ demographic? Is it just Sunday reacting to Jump? Or is it mere coincidence?

Nanatsu no Taizai takes place in a medieval setting. Seven overpowered warriors called the Seven Deadly Sins knights tried to overthrow the kingdom but were stopped by the Holy Knights. The Sins were reportedly killed but rumors are abound that they are still alive. Recently the Holy Knight themselves have overthrown the King are putting the Kingdom under their thumb. The King’s only daughter goes out to find the Seven Deadly Sins in hopes that they can free her father. A seemingly humble bar owner that saves her and turns out to be one of the Sins. Together can they find the remaining Seven Deadly Sins and tear down this new corrupt regime?

Overall it is fairly standard but enjoyable stuff. It is just standard but enjoyable stuff you would expect to see in Jump. Elizabeth, the princess is cute and determined but not very capable. Sunday usually prides itself on its strong heroines but she seems mostly like a tag along Jump girl. There is a bit more of the ecchi humor you expect to see in Jump. Not that Sunday is above ecchi humor but it is not the type of humor the magazine usually uses. Also so far the plot have a very Jump structure. There is just something about their journey to collect the other knights that feels very Jump in its execution. Both magazines use the battle manga formula but in distinctly different fashions.

The other thing worth noting is all the fighters start off INSANELY overpowered. Meliodas is shattering the earth with broken swords and playing cross county catch with lances thrown like ICBM missiles. There seems to be no shonen power creep. Everyone starts out as a god. If they have places to go from here they might start making Jojo’s blush. It would be neat if the characters were mostly already at their peak and most of the battles were about wits more than learning new techniques also like Jojo’s.

I am very curious to see how this recent break from form does for both magazines. Do either magazines have robust enough readership to support something outside their normal wheelhouse or will these titles be dropped as quickly as they came?

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 #188

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The first book of Vertical’s Limit is intense and I only expect it to get more so as the series continues. If you are one of those people who think shojo is all high school romance, pick up LIMIT to change your mind.

Limit is about the have and the have-nots in high school, the cliques and the outcasts. Envy, bullying, peer pressure, violence, humiliation, and revenge swirl around the girls of this school. The social hierarchy of high school is on full display as our lead character is an underling of the most popular mean girl. She is a follower because it gives her a sense of security.

That sense of security is one I never had as a reader, the series has an ominous atmosphere from the very beginning. And just as you suspect, things change in an instant during a school trip. Characters’ true nature come out in a crisis. It was also great to learn about some of the past that got people to this point, humanizing those who need it most.

The struggles to survive in high school become survival on a more base level in Limit.

Random, I really liked the design of this book. The size and typography make it feels very Japanese.

I know that Natutaki and I were both interested in Cloud Atlas but not enough to randomly spend money on seeing it in theaters. But when I won free tickets to see an early screening all reservations went out the window. I have to say that was a fortuitous little blessing. The movie itself was quite spectacular.

It is a fairly epic interweaving of six interconnected stories that take place over a span of more than a millennium. We see the redemption, corruption, and transmigration of several souls over the ages in a complex tapestry of life and love. It starts in the 1850 and ends in a distant post apocalyptic world. The same actors play different parts in each era as we see how these souls fare through the ages. Sometimes heroes will fight the good fight through the years, other times villains will commit unspeakable atrocities, and some people will wrestle with demons to various levels of success in every age. But both little and great decisions will always echoes through the ages.

I will warn people. The movie does not have the most inviting start. It rapidly switches between the six stories fairly rapidly to introduce each time period and show you that the stories will consistently be going back and forth. The story then calms down a bit as if it was just reminded it was three hours long so it could take its time it saying what it needs to. The movie then slows down and takes its time establishing what is going on in each era and becomes infinitely more comprehensible. Most of the stories are serious life and death struggles with serious bits of drama and suspense. The one story about the book publisher in the present is mostly comedy but it is a nice relaxing tale that helps the story from being too brooding.

I have to say the movie does a good job of adapting a fairly complex book in probably the most effective manner it can. While I am sure the original book has more complexity and depth of themes I think the movie does a good job giving you a good sense of what was in the original while treating you to a visual feast in the meantime. You just have to appreciate the vast amount of time and effort went into basically filming 6 short movies with vastly different feels and settings and to then to tie them all together with the same principle cast. Simply amazing.

I feel much like with my review of Forest I think the word pretensions is going to be thrown around a lot. But unlike the extremely indirect Forest I don’t think you have to put in that much effort to put most of the pieces together. There is a good deal of metaphor and intricacy beneath the surface of the narrative but the basic themes and plot is simple if you pay attention. But if you are actively watching I think there is a good deal to be gained from the story. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers but overall I think the story is optimistic. Some stories end in triumph, others in heartbreaking tragedy, yet some are Pyrrhic victories. None of the main characters make it to the end of their tales without losing something important along the way. But the overall message is one of the triumph of the human spirit. And that alone made the movie very fulfilling.

Oh and the movie teaches us one other thing. If you are a racist bastard then you will get your just deserts.

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 #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.

Continue reading →