REVIEW: Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell (manga)

By Masamune Shirow

Ghost in the Shell (manga)

Originally published in 1989

·         The print that came for America is notably mirrored so that it is read from left to right rather than right to left for the sake of Western readers.

·         The first chapter is done completely in color with some of chapter two done in color, which contrasts heavily with the cheap black and white print manga is used to.

·         The comic is mostly centered around a female cyborg agent named Major Motoko Kusanagi though very lightly as usually the comic goes onto be social commentary on the status of the future Japan and how robotics have changed the outlook of humanity.

·         The comic can be extremely pornographic along with violent at the time, as with the example of several ladies playing with each other’s private parts below the waist (Chapter 3, Page 5 or Page 56).

·         As a futuristic manga, the setting is surprisingly contemporary save for the fact that people have implants to become cyborgs. This is prevalent with the cityscape as seen on Page 4 at the beginning narration. This is a huge contrast with a series like Astro Boy or Battle Angel Alita where human geography changed in order to accommodate the future look like adding a flying city or making entire steam-punk slums where the destitute of humanity live.

·         Major Motoko is notably lighthearted in the manga series (like on Chapter 3, Page 38 or 89) where she almost gets herself killed yet exchanges witty banter with her battalion. This is a huge contrast to how she is depicted in the anime.

·         They go onto define future terms in articles in the manga, like robots as with Chapter 4, Page 1 or Page 98)

·         Turning women into attractive robots seem to be a more common theme than turning men into more anatomically appealing men, as with the case of Chapter 6, Page 32 or Page 141)

·         Makoto does not get her iconic costume in the anime until Chapter 7, as up to this point she had less revealing battle armor for most of her depictions.

·         Normal women are rarely seen in the manga and in their place men commonly have love doll cyborgs and clones of women they killed.

·         Makoto is in a relationship and is a strong independent woman as established in Chapter 8.

·         They don’t take the name of the series into account until Chapter 9 where a scientist places his dying mind into a robot girl’s body to live indefinitely

·         The manga is more self-contained in its original setting where Makoto is seemingly killed off yet cheats death by putting her brain into another robot body.

·         Overall, the manga is okay but the “death” of Makoto makes the entirety of the series a very self-contained story: where Makoto cannot return to her old body after the events of accidently shooting one guy, leaving her previous life behind as she merges with a Zen AI thing. It was an okay read but the variations of the anime series makes the series a lot different with each incarnation.

Bibliography:

Shirow, Masamune, Frederik L. Schodt, and Toren Smith. The Ghost in the Shell. New York: Kodansha Comics, 2009. Print.

REVIEW: Battle Angel OVA

Battle Angel (OVA)

Original manga by Yukito Kishiro

Battle Angel (OVA)

Originally aired in 1993

·         Due to the translational difference, “Alita” is “Gally” in the anime and the manga.

·         They add a romantic interest in an assistant to Doctor Ido in the OVA and downplayed the romantic tension between Alita and Ido.

·         The language used in the anime is Korean despite the fact that the Battle Angel Alita series is implied to either take place either in Japan or America in the future.

·         Unlike the manga, Ido is much more reserved in the anime and comes off more altruistically, not depicted as a sadistic hunter of rogue cyborgs but rather a proper father figure for Gally. He is also implied to be a great surgeon who helps cyborgs in the slums which is seen as beneath him despite the depiction of him in the manga.

·         The love interest for Gally and the lady doctor turn out to be shady characters in the anime and that Gally and Ido are the most balanced of the bunch.

·         The back story for the spine/brain stealing giant cyborg was changed to be less sympathetic in the anime as he is seen as but a tool for the lady doctor to get back into a floating city.

·         The back story for Gally’s Berserker armor is never explained and Ido placed the destructive machine body onto Gally despite the dilemma as a father figure he had in the original manga.

·         Violence has been toned down in the anime save for the dismemberment of a dog, where cyborgs and people are only implied to be killed with blood splats but nothing more violent than that.

·         The one black character looks complex compared to the simplistic and relatable designs of Ido and Gally in the anime, who is in turn beaten up by Ido for tricking the boy Yugo into stealing spines and getting himself turned into a cyborg.

·         Cyborgs are touched more upon in the anime than that of the manga, where cyborgs are seen as either forced implants to keep one alive or something you do in order to become more like a warrior. This was not touched upon in the manga as cyborgs are still considered “people” as with Alita’s case in the manga.

·         The fates of side characters are notably more brutal in the anime though not depicted, like how Yugo was killed from trying to get into the flying city and the lady doctor being killed and harvested for her organs by the shady black man.

·         The anime itself was called “Battle Angel” as opposed to “Battle Angel Alita” or “Gunnm” as with the original Japanese title. There were only two episodes “Rusty Angel” which was a retelling of Gally’s origins and “Tears Sign” which was original for the anime (at least not being in the first volume).

·         Overall, it was a great watch but the politics of organ donations played more into the anime compared to the definition of being human as with the original manga.

Bibliography:

Battle Angel. Dir. Hiroshi Fukutomi. Perf. Miki Itô, Amanda Winn Lee, Shunsuke Kariya, Kappei Yamaguchi,  Mami Koyama. Prod. ADV Films, 1993. DVD.

REVIEW: Battle Angel ALita

Battle Angel Alita

By Yukito Kishiro

Battle Angel Alita

Originally published in 1991

·         The cover depicts Alita with angel wings despite the fact she does not get any wings in the series. In fact, her name is that of Ido’s dead cat as established early on.

·         A lot of terminology in the series requires use of sci-fi captions as characters rarely dive into the nature of the world that they live in. An example would be when Alita is appraised by Ido to have the legendary fighting style Panzer Kunst (Page 28), which is never explained in story yet there are captions forced into the gutters explaining to the readers that it is a form of martial arts.

·         Alita is appraised as being a human being by Ido in the beginning despite the fact that she is clearly cybernetic and that there are no indicators that she is a cyborg or even organic early on in the story (Page 8-9). This could mean that humanity has moved past the vanilla idea of what constitutes a human by this futuristic story.

·         Alita’s dream sequence has it so she sees herself as a child (Pages 86-88, 98) when Ido first found her which contrasts with how we see her as the reader as a broken robot (Pages 1-11).

·         This whole segment of Alita being a discarded robot with amazing fighting powers contrasts drastically with how Tezuka portrayed Astro in Astro Boy, another robot child with super powers and a heart of gold. In fact, the brutality of Alita’s world takes a greater toll on the cruelty mankind can have on “lesser humans” than that even portrayed in the Astro Boy series as (Pages 79-83) Alita and Ido are clearly on the verge of death and yet the common citizens of the world care not for a bleeding man and his almost completely destroyed robot child in a society where robots and humans apparently become one in the same.

·         The brutality of the strong is made apparent in Alita’s world with how people have their brains eaten easily by monstrous cyborgs (Page 42) to how people pour acid into sewers where homeless children live(Pages 236-238).

·         Ido is himself a shady father character who grew up with handling the brutality of the world around him, as with the case of him being a hunter of rouge cyborgs (Page 46-49). It should be noted that he does not want Alita to delve into the world of violence she has been reborn into (Pages 44-45).

·         The exact nature of the story’s history is never made clear past that this takes place in the far future where people normally are cyborgs. There was apparently a super war in space that happened as with how Alita gets her Berserker body (Pages 92-97) which was a war machine that was used by soldiers and found by Ido.

·         Overall, this series is a great read especially when contrasted to the more kid-friendly Astro Boy. Battle Angel Alita was clearly tailored towards an adult audience and touched themes not normally presented in Western kids comics.

Bibliography:

Kishiro, Yukito. Battle Angel Alita. San Francisco: Viz Comics, 1994. Print.

MoCCA FEST 2013

Museum of Cartoon and Comics Art Festival 2013

An event at the 69^th Regiment Armory

MoCCA Fest 2013

An event on April 6-7, 2013

·         The event was enjoyable full way as the focus was mostly on independent comics rather than big brand names, unlike Comic Con which was focused mostly on DC and Marvel comics and other corporate entities.

·         Artists that I met included Emma T. Capps http://www.chapelchronicles.com/ and George O’ Connor http://olympiansrule.com/ and David McGuire http://gastrophobia.com/

·         The panels were actually interesting as the topics on hand are about artists making money through alternate distributions and the topics that artists can tackle on their work.

·         The booths had mostly “amateur” artists that are not sponsored by corporations. Rather, the bulk of their staying power comes from their self-published work and comics that they store and bring to the convention and sell directly to the audience.

·         At the Dare 2 Draw booth, they included George O’ Connor and Amy Reeder Hadley (artist who worked on Madame Xanadu for Vertigo, Supergirl and Batwoman). I met them both and even got Ms. Hadley to critique my art that I submitted to the Comic Book League Fall 2012 publication.

·         A good majority of the cartoon artists there have online tumblr or blogs or other means of digitally distributing their content for free. They usually said they did so due to the getting to habit of being on a deadline.

·         On the first day (Saturday), I wore a Captain Marvel (Shazam) shirt when I went by the Jack Kirby Museum booth, which I pointed out that I being there was notable irony as Jack Kirby worked on Captain Marvel in his early career.

·         There was a noted amount of people this year as years before lesser numbers of people show up on Sundays but in this year’s case a steady number of persons showed up for both days.

·         As the tables are manned by those who donated a good sum of money to the Museum of Cartoon and Comics Art and the Society of Illustrators, the quality of the booths’ wares do not necessarily match each other’s standards.

·         Despite the move of the Museum of Cartoon and Comics Art to the Society of Illustrators, MoCCA Fest was still held in the same armory as the years before.

·         There are notably no cosplayers this year as previous years of MoCCA Fest had at least a minority of people dressing up. There were, however, persons who dressed eccentrically.

·         Overall, MoCCA Fest was an excellent experience and I hope to go again next year.

REVIEW: Akira (Manga)

Akira

By Katsuhiro Otomo

Akira

Originally published in 1982

·         The manga starts off giving its science fiction back story on how the world of Akira is based on an alternate reality where Japan was bombed and that caused World War III, predating Code Geass and other realities where the basis of history in manga differs drastically from our own timeline in an effort to make a metaphor to how Japan has changed drastically (Akira, Pages 6-11)

·         Our protagonist is NOT named Akira but is instead a punk ass kid Kaneda who would beat up a bystander who happened to have superpowers. In addition, in the reformed version of Japan’s state the teachers are allowed to give their students a good sock in the face for some odd reason regardless of child abuse laws in our own reality. (Akira, Page 31)

·         The architecture of Japan in Akira notably is new buildings being built on the ruins of pre-World War III Japan. This is exemplified where tall buildings much like Judge Dredd which houses entire populations exist over the old Japanese skyline. (Akira, Page 35)

·         The club that Kaneda goes into notably has a Dante’s Inferno reference with the “Abandon All Hope” graffiti over where the story really kicks off. (Akira, Page 40)

·         The news with the pictures is notably photorealistic compared to the cartoony version of how people look in the world of Akira. (Akira, Page 109)

·         Of course, an evil corporation with human experimentation is the cause of all the mutations and weird stuff that is going on around Japan.

·         A LOT of the plot of the first part of Akira is based on motorcycle chases, which given pre-psychic powers this serves as the only action in the manga. (Akira, Page 125)

·         Of course, the protagonists and major characters in Akira are high-school students. However, this reflects how college is seen in America as the time of great self-discovery and nostalgia for the Japanese audience.

·         Kaneda is really a punk ass kid who takes the entirety of the situation in strides even though he’s been caught in gun fire and the sight of unholy psychic abominations at the beginning, hitting on Kei and actively threatening Resistance members. (Akira, Page 151)

·         People notably die horrible, gruesome deaths in Akira, like the gangsters who get their head exploded by pure psychic terror from Tetsuo. (Akira, Page 186)

·         There is little depiction of women save for the nurse that Kaneda slept with and Kei, though as most of the manga is based on gang wars and military psychic drugs it makes sense for this to be.

·         Over all, I like this manga a lot as a future cyberpunk psychic Japanese manga, however the trope has been done to death nowadays as with the titles of Code Geass, Gundam, and the like.

Bibliography:

Ōtomo, Katsuhiro, Yoko Umezawa, Linda M. York, and Jo Duffy. Akira. New York: Kodansha Comics, 2009. Print.

REVIEW: Lone Wolf and Cub (TV Series)

Lone Wolf and Cub (TV series)

By Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima

Originally published for DVD in 2008

·         As stated on Wikipedia, this adaptation of Lone Wolf and Cub for television is the most faithful to the original works of Koike and Kojima, with the son Daigoro actually being part of a number of assassinations.

·         The order of the TV series is more liberal than that of the manga, with the assassination of the guy with the hawks and several other ronin targets plus a love affair maiden having their stories intergraded together in the first episode. In addition, they note Ogami’s back story with the government and the Yagu clan very early on in the series whereas the manga had him fighting people anonymously for some time.

·         The opening notably uses art similar to the manga for the theme song as it depicts the Father and Son similar to the manga leading up to the reveal of how the characters look live action.

·         This adaptation is notable for being live action as opposed to an anime series, with the actors looking masculine and rough compared to how contemporary Japanese actors look, making this adaptation much like the samurai films of older Japanese cinema.

·         The actor of Daigoro notably has his hair in a similar style, even cutting a good number of his hair and having that “eyebrow” look on his head.

·         The sound used in the TV series notably has disco bass beats to it, much like samurai movies in the 1960s. This is a noted subtle touch to the series that makes it fee like an authentic retro samurai film.

·         As a minor thing, I liked the vigilante feel of the TV series, much like pulp fiction and Western cowboy films in America. The protagonists go into town and kill some trouble makers without the question of morality as our protagonists and their values are always seen as moral. Thus, we do not once consider necessarily if the bandits or the prostitutes that are in the series are in the wrong and so the writers could focus on the violence as opposed to the social matter.

·         The fight scenes take much longer to kill off villains than in the manga, though this may be due to the fact that this is a live-action adaptation so real martial arts and real-time physics played a role in how the characters interacted.

·         Most of each episode for the first thee episode goes down to the characters in the environment being shocked by the premise that Daigoro is following his assassin/mercenary father so loyally into the jaws of death and that Daigoro is so calm at watching people die in front of him. Based on the DVD description, Daigoro is one year old or slightly older so it is even more improbable than the manga in that Daigoro can do so much like make a fishing line with a horse’s tail, wield his father’s sword, or pick a lock.

·         The baby cart was tricked out even more in the TV series with pole arms and bullet proof padding on it more so than in the manga.

·         Overall, the TV series was a great adaptation of the manga as the theme of a father and child assassin team was done extremely well.

Bibliography:

Lone Wolf and Cub: Live Action TV Series 1. Perf.  Kinnosuke (Nakamura) Yorozuya, Katzutaka Nishikawa. Tokyo Shock , 2008. DVD.

REVIEW: Lone Wolf and Cub Vol. 1

Lone Wolf and Cub

By Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, introduction by Frank Miller

Originally published in 1970

·         There are many ridiculous forms of martial arts that is used in the series, like the “Hawk style” where the assassin’s against the Wolf and Cub used a hawk as the major part of their martial arts. (Pages 17-19)

·         A lot of the comedy of the manga comes from the interaction of the child with his environment, like with the daimyo threatening our protagonist while the child was crying to pee and they had to let the protagonist go so he could let his son piss. (Pages 23-25)

·         The action is notably defined by the lines used with the deadly slashes seen in the manga. (Page 28-29).

·         There is a lot of iconography of the father and son motif in this manga, like the image of introducing the Wolf and Cub assassin with dialogue with the image of a literal wolf and its cub and the two animals heading to the readers. (Page 37)

·         It is to note that the horse stampede is drawn realistically, but also that the assassin Lone Wolf is willing to use his son and the environment around him to throw his opponents off track: like how people are unwilling to slash at him because his son is on his back and then Lone Wolf cuts them down due to this flinch in weakness. (Pages 52-55)

·         The cart is notably its own character in Lone Wolf and Cub, as it is not only bulletproof but also can be used as a tool besides the sword and his son for Lone Wolf. (Page 85)

·         The child is notably very intelligent for being a three year old boy, being able to recite music and choose the way of the sword compared to the way of normalcy. This would imply he’s as much a warrior as his father yet this requires the suspense of disbelief that a child could be so capable at such an early age. (Page 114-117, 224-228).

·         Much like Miller’s work, women in Lone Wolf and Cub are notably capable of being adversaries alongside the normal brutes that make up the enemies of the protagonists. This is included with the eight deadly femme fatales that Lone Wolf and Cub had to surpass and kill in one story arc. (Pages 137-157)

·         Women are also victimized in the series as one lady was raped and strangled to death in front of the Lone Wolf and Cub, which contrasts with what we read in the previous chapters with femme fatales and with the gentle ladies. (Pages 173-174) This is to contrast with Miller, however, as he does not include gentle ladies in his works, only femme fatales and ‘whores.’

·         Overall, this is an excellent series but it is noted compared to other manga works due to the outlaw style of storytelling. This is a huge contrast with the manga that was designed for children that we saw with Tezuka.

Bibliography:

Koike, Kazuo, and Goseki Kojima. The Assassin's Road. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2000. Print.

Miller, Frank, Klaus Janson, Lynn Varley, John Costanza, and Bob Kane. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. New York, NY: DC Comics, 2002. Print.