Ongoing Investigations: Case #038

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Caught up with the English release of the D.Gray Man by reading books nine through twelve. We get fully into the new arc which includes a big transformation for Allen. This also starts really dealing with who the Noah and the Arc are. The intensity seems to have kicked up which didn’t seem possible! There are some major battles with some major deaths. The art has fully evolved and it’s striking and well done. It feels like I have an affinity for shonen fighting that doesn’t get as much attention and this is one of those titles that gets overshadowed.

Since Narutaki and I are trying out a three month subscription to Crunchyroll, I decided to take a test drive a few series. The first series was Gintama. Gintama always interested me just for its odd premise. A comedy series set in a Edo era Japan that has been visited by aliens and forcefully made to open up to these invaders echoing actual Japanese history. Being set in this period can only mean one thing: Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi are not main characters but they seem rather important to the overall plot. Gintoki Sakata, Shinpachi Shimura, and Kagura take odd jobs but otherwise live in poverty. The first two episode drop you right into the action with the main cast already acquainted which threw me off. However, It works well for an episodic comedy like Gintama. It is a quirky and amusing but never really made me laugh out loud. I like Kagura because she is so delightfully horrible but rarely malicious. Unfortunately, she happens to be one of those “lets make fun of the Chinese” characters the Japanese love. Can’t say I want to rush out and watch more but I would watch it at say an anime club or with a friend.

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Castle Point Anime Convention 2009

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If you are willing to experience them, there are benefits to every size of convention. Castle Point Anime Convention is a small college con in New Jersey at the Stevens Institute of Technology. It was a Sunday only event from 10AM to 7PM with a MC Frontalot concert after.  I was invited to participate in a panel by Evan from Ani-Gamers. It’s not that hard to get to from New York City so I was only too delighted to help out while having a Sunday activity at the same time.

I started my short trip with the NYC subway to the PATH Train. After that it was only a few blocks to the campus which was very convenient. There was a on and off drizzle the whole day so not having to brave the elements too long was greatly appreciated. The path I took to the college due to me remembering the map oddly threw me off a bit so it took me more time to find registration. I got my ticket then ran into Evan on my way to the Otaku History panel. Otaku History was run by Walter Amos and Rob Fenelon. It reminded me of what they said during their guest spot on Anime World Order but there is always something new to say. They went over how anime fandom started in America and how is has grown and changed. Most of the focus was on the earliest days since those are what most people don’t know about. They had some cool old American anime fanzines and I learned the origin of incredibly long and descriptive anime titles.

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Manga of the Month: April

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X-Day by Setona Mizushiro

This is a very short title that came out a number of years back. It easily caught some attention with the surface premise. Four people, three students and one teacher, come together through various  tragedies and decide to blow up their high school. But rather than being a look at an anarchistic plot, it is a story about the meaning of friendship. Rika was high on the social ladder till her injury and her break-up with her boyfriend. She no longer views her world the same way. As she tries to adapt she stumbles across a chat room where she meets three people who change her indefinitely. These people bond together and no one is more surprised about it than themselves. As the story goes on, and as the characters better learn about themselves, the plot against the school takes a backseat to them helping each other. This is a good short story, just two books, which is able to develop its characters in the limited amount of time.

Addicted to Curry by Kazuki Funatsu

Addicted to Curry is definitely a senien manga. Koenji Makito is clearly a senien hero because he basically starts off as a godlike curry chef. He might perfect his craft slightly or learn a minor lesson but he’s already an expert. You also have more of the healing manga setups than tournament manga ones. This means someone will have a problem and Makito will show them the answer with one of his dishes. That is not to say that there aren’t cooking battles. They are just more one on one battles over some point of ideology than tournaments. Being senien manga also means more fan-service and racy content but it’s nothing prevalent.

We start with Sonezaki Yui whose father, the owner of a curry restaurant, has disappeared after saying he was going to sharpen his skills. Despite her best efforts she will soon have to sell the restaurant due to mounting debt. On the way home she finds Koenji Makito starving on the street and accidentally throws food at him when trying to feed him. When he tracks her down it turns out he is a friend of her father and was hoping to work at his restaurant. He soon agrees to be the curry chef until her father comes back. It is going to take a lot of work for Yiu and Makito to get back into the black. There also seems to be an evil corporation that wants to buy the curry house and will do anything to buy the land.

Most chapters have a full recipe for whatever was made in it so you can make your own dishes. It is always nice to see a cooking manga that teaches you while entertaining you at the same time.