Araknamedia

I want to find happiness

I’m not sure exactly when manga started being published by companies in the United States.  My earliest manga purchases were the paperback size Mixx Manga of Sailor Moon, and the big flopped Magic Knight Rayearths.  The latter of which was surprisingly expensive even then – 14.95 per volume.  Yet I bought them.  I started into anime and manga fandom in the middle of my high school years and remember there only being a shelf of books to consider buying.  Thankfully over the years, the selection has grown to such an extent that I couldn’t possibly keep up with all the titles I want to keep up on, let alone new ones.  I’ve still managed to amass what I’d like to think is a pretty impressive collection.

There was a time early in my fandom when I was able to keep abreast of all CLAMP releases, and one that stood out was Clover with its weird tissue paper-like dust covers.  The volumes I own are in decent condition, but those covers tear so easily.  They’re pretty, but ultimately impractical, so I was glad to see an omnibus edition collecting all of Clover into one convenient volume.  Of course, I purchased it, and re-read the entire thing, and it surprised me.

A quick synopsis: Kazuhiko, a retired military officer, is requested to go on a final mission for his former commander.  He is to escort a girl, Sue to Fairy Park.  Along the way they are intercepted by the military of an opposing country, but eventually they reach their destination.

Now what really surprised me about it is that Clover annoys me terribly.  There are two giant reasons that it annoys me.  I appreciate the story being somewhat centered around a singer and the song that she co-writes with the girl, but the endless repetition of random song lyrics really got on my nerves, personally.  For me, it doesn’t help that I have absolutely no frame of reference for the tune of the song.  Without the tune, the lyrics have no rhythm and don’t add anything to the story besides my annoyance.

The other reason is the art, or the lack thereof.  It’s old style CLAMP with loads of wispy hair and sharp pointy eyes, which isn’t a problem.  The problem for me is all the white space, and all the panels that look like they were simply photocopied badly and pasted into place.  I spent a little time reflecting on why this bothers me so much and the simple reason is that I feel cheated.  I buy manga for both story and art, but this one seems awfully light on the art.  With all the manga I read, I’ve really become used to the page being filled, with empty pages serving to emphasize an event.  Most of the pages being empty however, emphasizes nothing and merely irritates me.  It seems awfully lazy.

My smaller complaint is the story.  The main story is linear, but it’s resolved in two volumes, leaving the other two volumes to fill in background.  I actually enjoy narrative that jumps the timeline of the story, so I didn’t mind this…much.  On a second reading however, it just seems like volumes three and four are filler created solely to fill up space.  The sad part is, I liked volume 3 more than the rest of the series.  It does the most to shed light on the entire world setting and general plot.  Plus the relationship between Ran and Ginsetsu is more interesting than any of the other relationships in any of the volumes.

Sadly, I have to say that I would not recommend buying the Clover omnibus, unless you happen to be a CLAMP completist.  Even then, I probably wouldn’t suggest it, simply because it’s so different from the works of CLAMP that I happen to be familiar with.  I will however, being looking forward to the Cardcaptor Sakura omnibuses with much glee.

Chibi Reviews: Suzaku of the Counterattack, Higurashi, and Black Butler

I’ve been reading a lot of manga lately, mostly because I can’t walk out of a store without at least 3 volumes, so I’ve been trimming down my stack to read by taking them to work with me and reading during my breaks.  Since I promised reviews of most of my last massive buying binge, I’m going to post some mini reviews, focusing on three aspects of each: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Code Geass: Suzaku of the Counterattack volume 1 manga by Atsuro Yomino, published by Bandai Entertainment

Synopsis: Code Geass told through the point of view of Suzaku Kururugi and without the mech suits.

the Good: The alternate telling of Code Geass from Suzaku’s perspective is interesting.

the Bad: It’s a little too unfamiliar.

the Ugly: It’s not all that memorable.

I didn’t actually buy this manga intentionally, it was included in a Code Geass DVD box set, which also had a soundtrack and drama CD.  I wish more box sets were that cool.

Higurashi: When They Cry (Abducted by Demons Arc I) story by Ryukishi07, art by Karin Suzuragi, published by Yen Press

Synopsis: Keiichi is really enjoying himself in his new hometown with his new friends, until he starts learning about the secret that everyone is hiding.

the Good: The color art is spectacular and the two page spread in this volume is one of the creepiest images I have ever seen.  I still get chills looking at it.

the Bad: The rest of the art was generic.

the Ugly: The harem seems awfully contrived.  I know this is derived from a game, but it still bothers me.

Black Butler, volume 1 story and art by Yana Toboso, published by Yen Press

Synopsis: Ciel Phantomhive’s butler Sebastian seems to be too good to be true or too perfect to be human…

the Good: There’s a good mix of seriousness and humor.

the Bad: I honestly can’t remember all that much of the plot in this volume.

the Ugly: The first chapter is completely different from the rest of the volume – reading it along nearly turned me off from the series altogether.

Unless otherwise stated, I personally buy all the manga that I review.

Seel! Wait, I mean Ciel!

If you follow me on twitter, you might remember that I complained quite a bit last weekend about sitting next to a guy wearing a skirt.  If you don’t follow me on twitter, that’s cool because I’m going to relate the entire story anyway.

This past weekend was Naka-Kon, a Kansas City anime convention running for its sixth year at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center.  I had applied to be staff this year, and I could be found at the Volunteer desk.  Whenever my director was away from the desk for a while there was usually another staff member sitting there with me.  One happened to be a guy cosplaying Riku Harada from D.N. Angel.  His costume was nice, it was just too bad that he completely acted like a guy.  Wearing a dress.  He would sit in his chair with his legs wide open, and then turn toward me to stare at what I was writing.  It was terribly awkward for me, mostly because I couldn’t leave, and I didn’t want to speak to him.  He’d already tried talking to me, but just quit after I didn’t show any signs of being impressed by what he was saying.

The funny thing is he’d talked to my roommate the day before.  Unfortunately that bit of conversation formed my initial not-exactly-positive image of him.

Him: Hey, you’re Rikku!

Roomie: …..yep.

Him: I’m Riku too!

Roomie: …..that’s cool. (shifty eyes)

Him: We should get a Riku from Kingdom Hearts, and (something I don’t remember), and make a whole group of just Rikus!!

Roomie: …uh….yeah.

Then we took our leave of him. Quickly.

I was happy to see a pretty complete cosplay group for Kuroshitsuji at Naka-kon.  I was surprised too, since the anime is (to me) pretty new, and not licensed (as far as I know).  I had personally just started watching Kuroshitsuji a couple weeks before Naka-kon, so I was especially tickled to see the cosplay group, and since I was working, sent the roomie off with my camera to get pictures of them.

Which brings me to my main-ish subject of this post: Ciel Phantomhive.  Starting Kuroshitsuji, I really didn’t like Ciel all that much.  He just seemed to me to be your fairly typical young, educated/smart, aristocratic, expressionless male.  In short, he’s better than everyone, and lets them know that they bore him.  It’s really overdone, so I’ll admit that I wrote him off.

Then I saw the episode of the anime where Ciel had to be disguised as a girl, wearing one pink and frilly dress.  That’s cause for chuckles normally, but it actually got me to like him.  The reason I started liking Ciel with his whole cross-dressing fiasco is that he was visibly uncomfortable with his situation.  His stance and expression showed his discomfort and the fact that he definitely did not want to be doing that.  Having to avoid his fiancee helped with the humor/discomfort.  For me, that made Ciel relatable.  He didn’t do the “cool guy” thing of showing absolutely no change in expression, and that’s why I now like him, at least more than I did.

Weekend Update!

This past weekend I’ve been pretty busy.  It was the weekend of Naka-Kon of course, and of course it was lots of fun.  I really enjoyed myself even though the grand majority of my time was spent behind the volunteer desk.

Overall it seemed like a calmer, more organized convention than it had in past years, and a lot safer for that.  I’m not sure if I’ll want to staff again next year or not…at the moment I think I’ll wait and see.  I really didn’t do anything besides work and visit the dealer’s room.

I also didn’t realize how big a draw two raves can be.  I personally don’t think that two are necessary, but from this weekend, I’ve learned that most of the Naka-kon attendees really want both those raves.  This year, one got replaced by a formal ball, and I heard the ball was actually pretty boring.  It’s a nice concept, but really, I’d be happy with a dance party sort of event.  Not a rave, not a ball, a dance.  That’s just me though.

I did pick up some figures, of course.  Not as many as I have in previous years, but the quality outweighs the quantity.  I’m debating on which to have a figure post about first, and I may put up a new poll for that.

I was also very impressed with the many awesome people who donated their time to help with registration and badge checking, including my roommate who got drafted because she was hanging around and chatting with me.  She rocks, and so do all the other volunteers.  I was also quite happy to see the number of adults starting to become larger as well as the usual 20-something and under crowd, especially in volunteers.  It warms this little otaku’s heart.

More later.  I’m going to sleep now and prepare for my boring week of working.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody! I hope you all enjoy today whether it’s a special day to you or not.  I know it can be pretty rough hearing about all the couples doing their lovey-dovey thing out there, so all I can say is just do whatever you enjoy doing and be happy.

This weekend brought another big change to my personal life.  My boyfriend has proposed and we’re getting married this summer.  Very exciting stuff, and it shocked the heck out of me.  I’m pretty lucky, I’ll be married to a guy who won’t mind my overwhelming obsessions…it’s pretty mutual actually.  He’s big into World of Warcraft and science fiction shows, which I don’t mind, so we’re a good fit.  I hope someday everyone can find someone that suits them like that.

Spring season and other thoughts

Recently checked out the chart for anime being released this spring, and it looks like I’ll at least be checking out more anime than I did for the winter (which by the way was zero, unless you count keeping up with Kimi ni Todoke).  I’ll probably be checking out Angel Beats, Maid Sama, and Black Rock Shooter, unless Crunchyroll pulls another Fairy Tail on any of them, in which case I’ll simply pass.  I’m really that lazy, and if I know there’s a legal means to watch the anime that I just don’t want to pay for, I’ll wait for another legal way to watch it.  Although I’ve heard that Fairy Tail is merely okay, so it seems I haven’t missed out on much there.

I’m relieved to admit that so far, out of the big pile of manga I bought a little while back, only 3 have grabbed me enough that I’ll probably keep up to date with them: Black Butler, Pandora Hearts, and Butterflies, Flowers.  I still have about half the pile to read still, and I bought a few more today.  I may do a couple group mini-review posts for all those.

My resolution to watch only a few anime at a time is not working like I’d hoped.  Right now, my MAL will show you that I’m in the middle of 15 series, which to me is a ridiculously high number.  I’m going to try and reduce that number a little, but it doesn’t help when I keep coming across this anime and that anime.  I should be finishing Fullmetal Panic! and Earth Maiden Arjuna soon though.

I’m also currently tempting fate by reading the first One Piece omnibus which contains the first three volumes of manga.  Looking it up earlier, I’ve found that apparently there’s omnibus editions up to the first 12 volumes, which is a good deal if you haven’t checked out One Piece yet.  I know, I’m late to the party, as usual.  I happen to like the rock that I live under for most of the year.  I’m enjoying it so far.

In videogames, I’m far behind everyone else, also as usual.  I should start playing Bioshock again.  In case you’re not sure, I mean the first Bioshock.  Then again, I might play Twilight Princess some more, but that’s only if I can get hold of a strategy guide.  Before anyone suggests gamefaqs, I’d just like to point out that I prefer guides with pictures and maps, thank you very much.

That’s all that’s going on in my world for now.  Except for Naka-kon which is next weekend.  Boy did time fly getting closer, but that’s how it always goes.  I need to put the finishing touches on my cosplay and see if I can’t get my prop closer to being finished.  I might not have the prop done in time, but I’m not too worried about it.  I’ll be staff this year, so I have no idea what my schedule’s going to be.  Hopefully I’ll still be able to check out a panel or two and take lots of pictures.

Changes are Afoot (personal)

This weekend was really pretty good.  I’d found out that I’d won a Tokyopop manga contest, and received the package for it, which had six volumes of free manga.  Can’t beat that!  However, I’ll be reading all except one of them AFTER I read the giant stack I bought last weekend.  While I’m on last weekend: DAMN.  So far, I’ve been drawn in by every first volume that I’ve read, which is sad news for my wallet.  Fortunately for me, the next volumes are not out, so I’ll just have to be patient.  I can do that, and besides I have plenty to read still.

My roommate is going to be teaching in China for two years.  The way that this affects me personally is that I technically live in HER house.  So we need to find someone else to come live here and help me pay bills, because I unfortunately can’t afford to pay them all on my own, otherwise I would.  We’re hoping to find someone soon though, and have that figured out at least.

How will this affect Araknamedia?  It probably won’t, honestly.  I don’t keep a regular schedule anyway, and one to two posts a week for me seem pretty comfortable.  However, in case I don’t post for a while, that’s probably why.

I’ve been amused to watch the votes trickle in on my review poll.  I’m counting Soul Eater as a shounen action review, so looks like I should review something of CLAMP soon.  I don’t really have anything “new” there, so I’ll probably just pull out something old and write up my opinions on it.  I’m thinking I’ll probably re-read the Legend of Chun Hyang.  Have a suggestion? Let me know in the comments.  If it’s fairly easy to access, that’s what I’ll review.  It has to be CLAMP though.

“I’m not special.”

I recently went on a manga buying binge, so there might be a lot of review posts coming from that.  I counted, and it looked like two-thirds of what I bought were first volumes.  So much for my self discipline and only keeping up with series I already had a lot of.  Darn those pesky manga publishers and their temptations.  For that matter, darn bookstores and their sometimes spotty selection as well.  Hm, that sounds like material for another post.

Today’s post won’t be about a first volume, rather I’m going to review the second and final volume of Beast Master.  For a refresher of what I thought of volume one, go here.

Yuiko really loves animals.  Unfortunately she gets too enthusiastic with her attentions, so animals don’t love her back.  Her animal loving ways do lead to her becoming friends with Leo Aoi, a scary looking transfer student who grew up in various wild places, like Africa.  Leo goes berserk when he sees blood and turns into a ruthless killer who scares himself, but Yuiko is able to get through to him and calm him down.

This volume was not quite as good as the first volume.  There’s a new arc introduced for a couple chapters wherein Leo is set to inherit a fortune once his birthday hits, and is consequently nearly killed by his jealous relatives.  Of course, Yuiko is thrown into the mix, but the interesting bit there is that Yuiko releases some of her own inner beast, shouting down Leo’s relatives as they tell him that he’s a freak and doesn’t deserve to live.  The whole “hey guess what? he’s rich!” thing just seems too cliche to me still.  Then Leo’s dad makes an appearance, just in time to whisk him away elsewhere so he’ll be safe from his relatives.  Yuiko attempts to convince Leo to go, and what happens after that is easily the best part of this volume.

The art remains great.  It’s clear, and there’s a lot of energy in it, which will keep me re-reading it over and over.  I will definitely be keeping a hopeful eye out, looking for more translated work from Kyousuke Motomi.

I was glad that another of his works was included in this volume, a short 4 chapter manga titled “Cactus Summer Surprise.”  I think I actually enjoyed the short manga more than the rest of the volume.

I still think it’s worth a buy, especially since the series is only two volumes.  That makes Beast Master a short and sweet addition to any manga collection.

A Sound Soul…

I’ve been taking advantage of Funimation’s streaming site to watch Soul Eater.  They’d been releasing episodes on a pretty regular schedule, so I’ve been able to watch the entire show subtitled, and hopefully help the American industry by doing just that.

Soul Eater is based on manga by Atsushi Okubo, which is being serialized in America by Yen Press.  The animation was done by Bones, and it premiered in Japan in April of 2008.  Currently as you might have guessed or known, the North American license is held by Funimation, who will be releasing the first box set of the anime next month.

From this point on, my review may contain some spoilers.  I promise it’s nothing major.

The basic premise of Soul Eater rests on the DWMA, a school for meisters and weapons.  They study and train to keep the big bad from returning to the world and wreaking havoc.  The secondary goal for some meisters is to make their weapons into a “Death Scythe,” or a weapon that Lord Death himself would use, by taking the souls of 99 Afreets (think evil demons) and 1 witch.

In the beginning of Soul Eater, you’re introduced to 3 teams.  Maka Albarn is a scythe meister, and Soul Eater Evans is her weapon.  They begin the series with their 99 Afreet souls, and are after a witch named Blair.  However, when they take Blair’s soul, they find that she wasn’t a witch and that all the work they’d done up to that point is now nullified.  The next team consists of Black*Star, a meister who’s training to be an assassin, and his weapon, Tsubaki, who has multiple forms.  They had a chance to get their Afreet and witch souls all in one go, but Black*Star passes his chance to instantly make Tsubaki into a Death Scythe.  The last team consists of Lord Death’s son, Death the Kid, and his weapons, Liz and Patty Thompson, who transform into guns.  Death the Kid’s purpose is to create his own weapons rather than let them be created for him, as Lord Death’s successor.

As Soul Eater will be a new release next month, I won’t be going much more into plot.  After some accidental research on wikipedia, I am aware that the anime takes a pretty drastic right-turn from the manga.  I’ve only read the first volume of the manga as it’s been available here, so I don’t have much of a frame of reference beyond that right now.

I personally found Soul Eater to be entertaining with a good cast of characters, and some eye-catching character and world designs.  It’s rather simple, but that also makes it easy to follow which is a plus for me, because I’m usually just looking for something entertaining when I watch anything.  It can be thought of as shonen anime with it’s themes of friendship and fighting.  I’ve been working to spread it around to some friends also, which means that I’ve watched some of the earliest episodes as many as five times, which means that I find it easily rewatchable.  That’s always good in my book.

My favorite part of Soul Eater is definitely the characters.  I think that Maka is one of the best female characters that I’ve come upon on anime recently.  She’s capable, smart, and fights beyond her own fear.  The boys in her class treat her as an equal rather than someone who constantly needs to be rescued.  Unfortunately she also falls into that tired anime trope – where are her parents?  Her father, Spirit is currently Death Scythe and stays by Lord Death’s side as his personal weapon, and her mother is completely absent.  There’s nothing said about the whereabouts of Maka’s mother until nearly the end of the series when Maka receives a post card from her.  I did think that the fact that Maka’s mother and father are going through a rather messy divorce while Maka lives on her own with Soul was weird.  Maka’s father is a deadbeat dad who’s going through a divorce because he can’t stop going to men’s clubs and flirting with pretty much any woman he sees, but he shouts his devotion for Maka every chance he gets.  Having a father that consistently threatened to embarass me in public does give me some sympathy for Maka and her plight, at least as far as her father goes.  Maka’s weapon, Soul Eater is obsessed with being “cool.”  There really isn’t much more to him than that.  Later on you’ll see Soul’s inner struggles in the form of a demon with a giant head and tiny body.  This gets to be pretty integral to the plot.

My favorite character is Black*Star, who manages to be the complete opposite of what he should be.  He trains to be an assassin but his ego demands that he shout his presence to the world, especially when it’s detrimental to his mission.  Later in the series, he’s aware of this, but it does him no good, he usually thinks about it after he’s already shouted.  Black*Star is the “man who will transcend God,” and allows nothing to obstruct his path to greatness.  He has some great development over the course of the series.  One of the best things the writers did was to hand Black*Star a taste of defeat and the opportunity to overcome that.  His weapon is Tsubaki, who takes the form of multiple ninja tools, but mostly she’s a chain scythe.  She’s quiet and exceedingly polite, and the only person who can put up with Black*Star for any amount of time.  She offers him absolute support, constantly.  I don’t remember any point in the series where she doubts him verbally, although it doesn’t keep her from flat telling him when she thinks he’s done something wrong and needs to fix it.

Death the Kid is very nearly topples Black*Star from being my favorite character.  His obsession with symmetry is his major trait.  This obsession is so strong that it gets in the way of his battles, causing Kid to abandon his weapons, Liz and Patty in the middle of fights to go check that his toilet paper looks nice, or to make sure that painting in the foyer is lined up just right.  Good thing Liz and Patty are capable of fighting on their own, and some of the scenes where they switch between being the gun and being the wielder of the gun are some of the best action scenes.

I’m not going to go into the rest of the characters, because that would make this a ridiculously long post, and it’s pretty long already.  I did have some problems with this anime.  There’s obviously a structure for a large overarching plot, but the episodes themselves felt choppy to me, and didn’t really have much connection from one episode to the next.  You can pick up the series at nearly any point without missing out on much, which is both a strength and a weakness.  It’s a strength because that does make it more accessible to more viewers.  It’s a weakness because that takes away any kind of reason to watch all the episodes.  The first dozen or so episodes felt very disjointed to me, and that bothered me some while I was watching.  I did like the three seperate introduction episodes for the three main teams.  That was a good way to introduce the world, and the main players, and it didn’t take away from their particular character development by trying to mash the introduction in with the ongoing plot.

Once the plot got really rolling, it was good.  The pacing was nice, not speedy, but quick enough to keep me intrigued.  In the second half, though, there’s a lot of new characters introduced and lost in the shuffle of the greater plot.  There’s a big lack of character development that is understandable if you think of the episode limit, but it’s still a shame.  I would loved to have seen more of the other DWMA students, or the members of the opposing factions.

Personally, I would have liked to seen more character development overall.  I thought the characters were the best part of Soul Eater and some of my biggest problems with the anime stem from how characters were handled.  In particular, I didn’t much like most of Dr. Stein’s story – who I realize I have not mentioned up until this point.  I think this review is long enough already, so maybe I’ll go more into that in a seperate post.

I also would have loved more of the world.  There were tons of questions I had that I would love to have seen answered, like how does someone determine if they’re a meister or a weapon?  Is it hereditary?  Does it happen randomly, or can it be obtained with training?  What makes someone a witch?  Etc etc.  I imagine these questions may be answered in the manga, so I might keep up with it to see if that’s the case.

Overall, I enjoyed Soul Eater.  I’d recommend it to pretty much anybody.  I know that I showed it to some friends that haven’t watched much anime at all and they got a kick out of it, and the husband later thanked me for showing his wife an anime that had a good female character in it.

Attention Manga Lovers

I just went through my manga collection and have quite a few that I don’t want. Here’s the deal: if you see something here that you’d like to have, comment here or e-mail me  (sailorsamus@araknamedia.com) and I’ll send it to you. I’m not really interested in making money from these, I really just want them out of my room and I’m willing to send them to people I (sorta) know first.  No charge.  I will send you free manga.

In the (unlikely) event that more than one person wants a volume of whatever, whoever messages me first gets it. I’ll be keeping this list updated also.  Also, I’ve put this list up on my personal facebook page, so there may be some competition, but I doubt it’ll be all that serious.  I just hope this works.

Manga up for grabs!

-Beauty Pop vol 8 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Kiyoko Arai
-Absolute Boyfriend vols. 1,2,3 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Yuu Watase
-Ral Grad vols. 1,2,3 (Shonen Jump Advanced/Viz) Tsuneo Takano & Takeshi Obata
-Wild Ones vols. 1,2,3,4,5 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Kiyo Fujiwara
-Tokyo Boys & Girls vols. 1,2,3,4,5 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Miki Aihara
-Heaven’s Will (Shojo Beat/Viz) Satoru Takamiya
-The World Exists for Me (Tokyopop) Chiho Saito & Be-Papas
-Descendants of Darkness: Yami no Matsuei, vol.1 (Viz) Yoko Matsushita
-Densha Otoko vol.1 (CMX) Hitori Nakano & Wataru Watanabe
-Her Majesty’s Dog vol.1 (go!Comi) Mick Takeuchi
-Go Go Heaven!! vol.1 (CMX) Keiko Yamada
-The Magic Touch (Oyayubikara Romance) vols. 1,2 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Izumi Tsubaki
-Sensual Phrase vol.1 (Viz) Mayu Shinjo
-Captive Hearts vols. 1,2,3 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Matsuri Hino
*Edit February 10, 2010: all claimed or sold off, sorry about my impatience, although this isn’t too likely to happen again any time soon. Rest assured, any time I have extras of something, I will post them here first for you guys. Or make a contest of it.