Togusa: A Regular Guy in A Cyber World

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Having just finished the second season of Stand Alone Complex as well as the Solid State Society movie, I’ve been thinking about and discussing the dynamics of the Section 9 team at length. When you start considering it, Togusa comes off as quite an anomaly as he actively resists the over-cyberization of the current world of Ghost in the Shell. A series that looks at the relationship between technology and humanity and how close those lines have blurred has Togusa to lead us back.

In the modern age anyone who does not regularly carry around at least one piece of electronics on their person at all times  is quite the oddity. In the Ghost in the Shell universe this has been taken one step beyond with cybernetic technology making it so the average citizen has electronics integrated into their body. In this world it is not uncommon for people to replace parts of their bodies with cybernetics not only for medical necessity but also for augmenting their natural ability. The members of the secret counter terrorism group Section 9 are some of the most heavily modified people around with even the hacker Ishikawa having replaced pieces of himself with machinery. This makes Togusa so unusual as he is the one member of the organization that is considered a “natural” with only the minor about of cyberization you would see of a normal person off the street. So why is this completely mundane police officer part of an elite cyborg unit? What does he bring to the story of Ghost in the Shell?  I can’t see Section 9 having to be an equal opportunity employer.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #126

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I finished up Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig rather quickly after my mention of starting it last week. Because, yes, it was as stupendous an achievement as I was promised it would be. Almost every episode ties into the main plot so it has a lot of momentum as it unfolds. Since I was watching it quickly, things were able to connect in my head better than it probably would have otherwise. The ending was wonderfully set up and intense and I liked that we didn’t totally know for sure if Kuze was the man we thought he was till that final moment. The scene of Battou digging with that piece of steel that looked like a cross was nice too because while the symbol itself is obvious it made me ponder the idea of the Major being Battou’s cross-to-bear. And the main story ending story ending with the Major doing what she did, very satisfying. I also loved the couple of side stories, especially Saito telling the tale of how he met the Major. And of course the Tachikoma’s rocked it like always! Most people say this is the better season, and I loved it, but the first I still hold as the best.

If anyone remembers we did a little article about the Rough Guide to Anime awhile back so I decided to check out it’s companion piece the Rough Guide to Manga as well. They are clearly in the same line as the format of the books are almost identical. It starts with a brief history of manga, the influence and spread of manga in Asia and America, 50 recommended titles, a look at manga publishers, and books and websites to help you continue your journey, and a glossary. The thing is while both a great introduction to the material, especially for anyone just getting into the hobby, I know I was learning little things I did not know from the manga guide all the time. The history of manhwa and the myths of Osamu Tezuka stood out as particularly interesting.  Apparently the manhwa industry was so strictly regulated in the 60s that men and women could not be depicted in the same panels together. Craziness. The canon section is a fairly good mix. Nothing extremely obscure but that is not the point. A decent mixture of old and new with classics like Lupin III and To Terra along side Peach Girl and Vagabond and of course Akira and Naruto. Paradise Kiss was the only josei tittle but at least they had one although I myself would have wound a way to sneak in Nodame.  But it has Maison Ikkoku so I can’t complain too much. There was no individual manga-ka section but there were some important artists like CLAMP, Leiji Matsumoto, and Rumiko Takahashi mentioned in the canon section. The book it a little outdated especially with the recent shake ups as it still list Dr Master and Aurora Publishing as functioning companies. Still it is a great resource for anyone just getting into manga who needs a guide of where to start digging deeper or where to begin looking in the first place. More experienced fans can give it a look as well as even luminaries like Ed Chavez are occasionally learning something new about the complex world of manga.

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Why we don’t do manga secret santa.

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The Secret Santa Project has been an unexpected success each time we have run it with the number of participants doubling from 2009 to 2010. It helps bloggers spread the word about their favorite overlooked titles while broadening the horizons of all the participants. The thing is, every time the project is mentioned there is always one request we hear time and time again. People really want us to do a manga version as well. This call has not been ignored. It is just there are some logistical problem we that need to be overcome.

It might not be apparent but there were several problems with a Manga Secret Santa that do not come up with the anime version. The first being a maximum length of the series you could recommend. With the average anime series being 26 episodes or less it was easy to make that the upper bound. But there is no easy cap to use for manga. Also you can get a whole anime series for about 30 to 50 dollars with anime but even just 10 manga will cost you 100 bucks (not accounting for savvy shopping). Keeping this in mind, we came up with a plan.

Our solution was simple. Instead of trying to read an entire manga series, you would get three series you have never read before as part of the project and read the 1st book of all three series and then write-up at least one of them. It seemed like a good compromise. While you would not get the comprehensive look you would from the anime reviews, it would allow people to experiment a bit more with a reduced commitment required.

But another problem still loomed: how to get everyone to make a comprehensive list of what series they have already read. Every year when we do Anime Secret Santa we get several people whose lists of what anime they have watched is missing several vital titles they forgot. Invariably someone will then recommended them the title they forgot to list. Using My Anime List as an example, it has 322 pages of anime titles vs. 857 pages of manga titles (thanks to the inclusion of doujinshi). Even Anime Planet’s more streamlined list is still 150 pages of manga as compared to 105 of anime. Other book listing sites like Shelfari have inconsistencies in their manga collections such as missing author names or wrong numbers even in the same series.

Going along with this is the fact that most people are reading dozens of manga at one time. Unlike a lot of anime where you just watch through an entire series in a timely manner. But even if you are following a show weekly, it general doesn’t go over a dozen. But manga, we are constantly waiting for the next book in English to emerge. It can take years, even decades, for an entire series to see an English release so people have myriads of titles left only partially read. The chances of people handing in incomplete lists is so high that Narutaki weeps at the thought of having to coordinate such a project.

We don’t really have an answer to this problem therefore we have decided to try to crowdsource an answer. Is there a streamlined program that lets you record what manga you have read? It has to be able to make a simple but comprehensive list of titles. Does anyone even want to attempt to do such a thing with their manga reading now that we’ve explained the dilemma?