Tag: Detective Conan

Ongoing Investigations: Case #123

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Let me be up front and tell you that while Level Up does touch on the topic of video games it is not nearly as much about the games as you might first suspect. Video games come up and they are used as a metaphor but they are one of several metaphors used in the book. It is really the story of how a boy grows up with the expectations of his parents while tying to balance it against his own desires to be happy. We see Dennis Ouyang go through his life oscillating between hiding himself in video games which he loves and beings quest to becoming a gastroenterologist despite the fact that he has no interest in the job. After his farther dies and he gets kicked out of college he is visited by four little angels that act as nagging guilty consciences that demand that he fulfill his destiny of becoming a doctor. So he whips himself back into shape and is slowly but surely is on his way to satiating the angels. He makes friends and even finds love but he is constantly plagued by the fact that he is going into a career he hates. Despite the addition of the angels it is an extremely relatable story. We have all expectations place on us by the people who raised us and know how they can conflict with our attempts live our own lives. The more the exceptions placed on you the more the book will speak to you. Dennis and his friends sell the story by being delightful characters that draw you in. The art simple and has a very independent comic vibe but it is expressive while maintaining a warm feeling. Level Up is a nice one book story with a fairly important lesson for anyone who is lacking direction their life or remembers what that feeling is like.

The first chapter where we see Dennis’s failed attempt to get a Nintendo for Christmas might be the most relatable scene of the book, you wanted him to get it but knew he wouldn’t. And it is just as easy to struggle with Dennis as he weighs his father’s desires against his own changing perspective. It said it all to me when Dennis’s mother told him “Love is for people. Not work.” Each generation in each culture deals with this difference in thinking, but the Asian American experience depicted here should be very familiar, I know it mirrors my friend’s stories. But I think what was refreshing about this story is the balance it strikes in the end proving you don’t have to cast off your family completely to be who you are. Though I have to say that parents might need this lesson more than kids. Gene Luen Yang brings these lessons in with video games, humor, and great pacing. Sparse words are needed as Thien Pham perfectly conveys everything you need to know visually. A perfect collaboration.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #116

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Gunslinger Girl is such a big seller for Seven Seas that they are releasing omnibus editions, we got a look at the first one which contains vols. 1-3. I was very interested in this title just because it seems to garner some contradictory ideas and people. This series takes cute, little girls and turns them into cyborg assassins for a secret government organization. Despite their training and conditioning, they are still able to form connections though inevitably most are either disturbing or end poorly. The first two volumes, give or take, are somewhat vignette-like as we learn a little of the tragic story of each girl. It really stops being shocking however after the second or third time you’ve seen it. So once the series starts on a more robust story in volume three things get better. Though admittedly I’m more interested in the Section 2, the terrorist plot, “Pinocchio,” and various other story elements that are not these children. Once again it is a series that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, but seems to be designed that way . . . maybe. I do have to wonder why there are no little boy assassins or why these girls are so cute, cute all the time even when they are just hanging out in their rooms or why every female in the series seems to be blushing nine times out of ten. I’m not quite sure what it is saying, if anything at all. There is plenty of action and political plots, though sometimes a bit talkie. One thing I noted from beginning to end was how much the art changes, it becomes much softer and uses a thinner line as it goes (below left side is the chapter 1, right side is chapter 17).

Gunslinger Girl has always been a series that has given me mixed feelings. On one hand I know people sing the praises of the story and its twisted but illuminating nature. On the other hand it seems to have a strong loli vibe even if there is no obvious fan service. I assumed the only way to see if which half of its legacy Gunslinger Girl lives up to is to read the manga myself. In the end I am not sure if I have any clearer feeling on the series now that I have read three books of the series. There is a story of politics and wet works as the government uses and abuses these little girls like objects to eliminate criminals and enemies of the state. All the stories have a heavy air of melancholy and tragedy that seems inescapable. On the other hand all the girls are portrayed as uber cute little sister characters whenever they are not killing people. Also all the girls and the obsessive big brother devotions that can be seen as catering to a bracket obsessed with little sisters. There are going to be three camps most fans fall into in the series. The first is those who see the girls as a tool for storytelling. By making them these ultra innocent little girls it heightens the darkness of their lives and how they are used as disposable weapons. The second group is going to see the book as a critique of otaku culture. You have a contrast of the insanely devoted moe little girls with their exploitation by those who supposedly are their noble guardians. You could also just see it as standard little girl fetishism with a coating of dark political thriller to make it more palatable. That said the service in never blatant but it is always present. The story with the kaleidoscope or Elsa de Sica clearly have romantic to sexual overtones. Since there are not constant panty shots and long bath scenes the interpretation of the stories will mainly come down to your predisposition. The reader will focus on the part of the story they gravitate to and trivialize what they don’t care for. The stories themselves are usually very slow going as far as to having some slice of life chapters but are broken up with pages of violence and personal horror. The omnibus is a good introduction to the series and a more than 400 pages it gives you a good sense of where on the spectrum your opinion of the series will be.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #114

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I watched some of the various Detective Conan OVAs 1-9 stretched across many years. OVA 10 I haven’t gotten my hands on yet, and the Magic File OVAs I’ll leave for a separate post as they relate to the movies. It’s worth noting that they didn’t start making Conan OVAs until the 2000’s and they continue to make them despite the deadness of the OVA market but hey it’s a huge franchise. For the most part they are silly romps, some not even containing a real case, but not very memorable either way. The better ones are two containing Kaito Kid, perhaps I am just totally bias, OVA 1 which is actually very funny and OVA 4 where Conan and Kid end up on the same train with a precious jewel; OVA 3 guest stars Heiji who teams with Conan to find a missing kid; and finally OVA 9, which was probably my favorite despite not having a case, where Conan sees what the future might hold should he never find an antidote. These OVAs are really just supplemental material that aren’t required viewing so they are easy to just grab a few or skip all together.

hisuicon As a long time fan of the Phoenix Wright games I had to check out Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective to see how the spiritual successor stacked up to the original. While it is very clearly a Shu Takumi game it is a very different in terms of mechanics and flow. In Ghost Trick you start the game after just been killed. You are a ghost who cannot remember who you are, how you died, or who killed you plus on top of that have only until sunrise to figure it all out. You do have a few remarkable ghost powers to help you interact with the land of the living. You can jump from various inanimate objects and manipulate them in a Rube Goldberg fashion. So if wanted to alert someone before they were shot you could say jump into a fan, have it turn on, then jump into a piece of memo paper kicked up by the fan, ride it to a bicycle, and then have the bicycle ring its bell. But if that warning was not enough you can jump into the body of the recently dead and rewind time to 4 minuets before they died. So most of the game is you jumping around trying to save people in hopes that one of them will lead you discover who killed you and why. Ghost Trick has the same snappy writing of the Phoenix Wright games while being a solid departure from the courtroom drama. The twists in the game were clever and shocking but were not out of nowhere especially if you were paying attention. Ghost Trick could easy rank as one of Narutaki’s top 10 games of the year just because you team up with a lovable Pomeranian named Missile during the course of the game. The puzzles were decently changeling without every being unfairly difficult. There are some when you just have to try everything until you see a change. Also sometimes you just have to go through a section, see where you utterly mess up, rewind time, and then avoid the trap they set you up for. The only thing that is completely and utterly unchanged from Phoenix Wright is the music which while great could very easily just be mistaken for the soundtrack for Phoenix Wright 5. It is a really fun game that could be a franchise that equals its older brother.

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