Manga Trumps Film Again

Watched Shinobi: Heart Under Blade. It is not a bad movie, with some aspects like the cinematography and visual effects particularly noteworthy. That it is shot beautifully is not unusual for a Japanese film, but the CG and wire effects used to show off the ninja superpowers, while not up the level of high-buck Hollywood films, is way better than most things I've seen about super-powered martial arts coming out of Hong Kong. This film almost completely eliminates the 'floatiness' of wire-fighting.

However it doesn't hold a candle to the manga version of the story, released in the USA as Basilisk. The whole thing actually originated as a novel, The Koga Ninja Scroll, but I have not read it. My understanding is that both film and manga depart rather a lot from the source material. While the film does read on paper as having the same plot as the comic, the comic is just a more spectacular piece all around.

I had a discussion not too long ago with the manager of our local comic shop about how comics were dying off. Or at the very least, about to hit a huge downturn. His point was that with all the different distractions and pastimes available to kids (and adults) these days, comics just get lost in the shuffle. He felt kids from this point on would STILL find the great stories of the heroes and characters we grew up with in the comics, but that they would know them as TV and movie heroes predominantly. So many more people have probably seen the Iron Man films than have ever cracked open an Iron Man comic book.

I don't think comics, manga, or graphic novels will ever go away. I think they may have to die down from the huge levels of excessive publishing that is still evident in Barnes & Noble and my local comic shop. In relating information about comic book-originated characters to my own kids I really work to make sure they understand where these things all come from.... but it is REALLY difficult to show any advantages to comics over movies or video games. Comics are, by and large, unnecessary to them.

Despite this my kids ARE getting into some comics, manga specifically. Japanese comics have the benefit of being finite.... and having disposable characters. They don't play by the same rules. Most of them tend to be auteur-driven and the creator has an end in sight for his or her story. Manga can be really long-running, but the characters don't run through dozens of writers and artists all of whom have their own ideas about how things should go... or a big company keeping them within the rigors of the house universe. There are tons of American, British, and European graphic novels that break the endless superhero mold, but they don't seem to feature the same iconic (read fan attractive) characters that most manga do. And it is much easier to get started on a manga. Want to read Batman? Where do you frickin' start? Like the Avengers cartoon and want to get more from the comics? Good luck figuring that out. There's the Avengers, New Avengers, Dark Avengers, Ultimate Avengers. Fucking hell. I know a lot about the Avengers, but even I get totally lost. I flip through a couple of books every now and then just to feel like I'm keeping up with the major plot points, but it is all so convoluted... and really it always has been, I just didn't have so much to the rest of my life.

Monster Ending

Finished Urasawa's dramatic manga Monster! a few days ago.

If one isn't familiar with some of the conventions of manga, reading this you'll find a fair amount of over-emoting and a lot of drama-injection over ultimately small plot points, but this mostly owes to the episodic nature of the material. Like most manga this was released bi-weekly for years, and when you read it in collected volumes (tankoubon) like this it compresses the dramatic scenes together and their frequency amps up into melodrama territory.

Nonetheless, this is a first-rate dramatic story. Apart from the above caveat, other scenes (and the emotions therein) are handled with deft subtlety. Urasawa's artwork is a real grower. You'd think at first glance it was just sort of workmanlike, but as the story moves along you realise how talented the guy really is. There's a huge cast for the type of story it is, and his ability to keep everyone distinct and well-characterised with both art and writing is pretty admirable. His talent also shows how a topic normally consigned to film or television really can make a good manga... a medium characterised by the phrase over-the-top.

The last few volumes really dovetail everything together well. In the final book I actually found myself getting a bit choked up in two or three places, and the last revelation to the reader, though it wouldn't seem like such a big deal out of context, was pretty devastating from within the story.

In some ways you get a lot out of it that you might've from Death Note, but more believable (of course) and without any supernatural aspects... though the villain, Johan, is inhumanly evil.

At any rate, take a break from robots, battlesuits, and lolis and give Monster! a go.

Monsters Among Us

What do you do if you save the life of someone who goes on to wreak great evil?

With the tagline: 'The choice you make, the price you pay.', I have been reading the manga Monster by Naoki Urasawa.

I cannot recommend this title enough. It is one of those sorts of stories that doesn't have to be told as a manga (comic) but is absolutely awesome in that medium. There are no giant robots, no superheroes, no psychic powers. This could just as easily been a made-for-TV movie... and in its plot essentials it probably has been.

Set in the mid-80's it's the story of a peerless surgeon, Dr Tenma, who has moved from Japan to practice medicine in Germany. Tenma is talented, kind-hearted, and got into medicine to help people regardless of race, social standing, or the ability to pay. Starting out as a cynical (if somewhat exaggerated) story of hospital politics, Tenma's world comes crashing down when a young boy he saved on the operating table turns out to be a serial killer. And I don't mean 'turns out be' in a few years. I mean, right away. So Tenma's career, conscience, and everything else is in jeopardy as he tries to exact some kind of answer or justice from his situation.

The manga format allows this story to be told in a detailed expansive way that no film would be able to duplicate. Print novels or lengthy anime series could perhaps do it... and of course there has been an anime series which I understand is very good in its own right. But this is the original vision.

In typical manga (or anime) fashion much of the drama is played broadly and 'overacted' in the sense of everything being super-urgent, super-dreadful, or super-tense. Part of that owes to the fact that the chapters in manga books (tankoubon in Japanese) are read one after the other, but in their original print run were serialised weeks apart. So when it looks like characters are reacting as if every chapter is some emotional climax it owes to the cliffhanger nature of the weekly or monthly manga installments. There are eighteen volumes in the series (of which I've read five up to the point of this writing).

Apart from the melodrama, this is a tale for anyone who likes their suspense and plot twists served up in heavy doses. Obviously to justify a tale spanning eighteen paperback book sized volumes there's more to it than just 'doctor tracks down serial killer'. There's a lot of bigger 'conspiracy' things going on, and a lot of sideplots involving the various characters. But all of it is interesting, and almost all of it is directly relevant to the main plot.

Unlike something like Death Note, this manga is pretty well grounded in reality. These are all realistic people, in real towns, doing real things. The plot, with all its twists is not as complicated as Death Note, but the characters are also much more believable. Don't get me wrong, I liked Death Note just fine, but it was peopled by the kind of uber-minds that only exist in fiction... not to mention the supernatural Shinagami themselves. Monster is cast with people you could know in any house or on any street corner... er, if you lived in Germany.

I'm compelled to finish this manga before embarking on the anime. I easily enjoy manga as much as I do any other medium, and I'd like to soak in the creator's unadulterated vision for this thing. It has become fairly common for anime based on suspense-heavy sources to change events or endings from their originals to keep the viewer guessing. If you've watched the live-action Death Note films you know what I'm talking about. It would take A LOT of the steam out of a Monster anime to know all the plot points coming up because you read the manga, so it will be interesting to see how they handle this. Of course I have to avoid all online plot summaries and such at all costs. Spoilers would kill anything having to do with this story!

If you can put up with a lot of dramatic shouting, don't walk, run to pick up this series. What a great change of pace from all the other monsters in comics and movies.

If You Like That...

Quick note about additional translated work by Koike/Kojima.

Dark Horse has available Samurai Executioner and Path of the Assassin.

Samurai Executioner is the story of Yamada Asaemon, executioner of 'common' criminals for the government in Edo (the capital, Tokyo nowadays) and sword-tester. He is a character who eventually runs across Itto Ogami in Lone Wolf and Cub, but he has a ten-volume manga all his own. He is honorable and expert in his way, as Ogami was, but his circumstances are quite different. He basically addresses many of the questions about samurai society, bushido, and life in general from the standpoint of his official position. The stories each tend to stand on their own, with no overall narrative arc. But each tale is fascinating and the artwork is basically of the same quality and with the same extremes as Lone Wolf. There was something of a melancholy air over the whole thing knowing how this noble character was eventually going to end up, though that finale isn't contained in this work.

Path of the Assassin is probably the weakest entry. It is a good story, and contains quite a bit of action tending towards ninja (shinobi) intrigues as opposed to straight up samurai dueling, the staple of Lone Wolf. But the story is about the friendship and drama surrounding Tokugawa Ieyasu (real historical figure), and Hattori Hanzo (historical figure with a lot of myth surrounding him). So it is more of a history lesson than anything else much of the time. For readers growing up in Japan some or most of this is at least vaguely familiar, and it might be fascinating for them to see the intrigues going on behind-the-scenes to make the historical events play out, but for MOST Western readers it's probably too dense and too dry. Their are endless lists of generals and lords, lots of battles and political manuevering. Dark Horse does an admirable job helping keep track of it all for English readers, but it is just kind of an esoteric subject... for real Japanophiles, samurai or tactical goobs, or fans/followers of studies in history and government. I qualify in some capacity for all of that, but even I find it dry going, if not actually confusing. The realistic grounding of the shinobi skills is pretty cool though. Much the way fantastic aspects of Lone Wolf were handled.

So fans of Kozure Okami should run, not walk to get Samurai Executioner. With Path of The Assassin, you should look over a volume or two to make sure it works for you.

Suio-ryu Zanbato!

I've finished reading the manga series Lone Wolf and Cub for what is probably the seventh or eighth time. Maybe I've 'read' the Japanese version four or five times, and then since Dark Horse came out with an English-language edition (I did collect First Comics monthly installments when they were publishing) I've probably gone through it the same number of runs again.

In my opinion, this is just the greatest graphic story ever written.

To anyone who knows me, the surface elements already just seem to fit many of my interests; Japanese history and pop culture, martial arts, comics, exploitative or transgressive media-- its got it all. Even if you are not a fan of any of that stuff, this work is still something you should seek out. Unless you cannot deal with mature subject matter I cannot recommend it highly enough. I'd actually dare to put it alongside literary classics, though I won't claim enough expertise or credentials for anyone to take that move seriously. I'm no stranger to the great novels (or their criticism and context). Apart from the format (sequential illustrations, the so-called graphic novel) there is no less resonance, effort, talent or intelligence in this work. In fact there's probably more effort and talent comparatively, since it is collaborative between writer and artist... AND coupled with Dark Horse's translation staff pulling off a heroic feat in bringing this work to the English reader with dignity, and most cultural specifics intact.

The work of writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima, Lone Wolf and Cub (Kozure Okami in Japanese) was a years-long serial that ran in a monthly adult manga magazine in Japan in the early 70s. Hugely popular in its home country it spawned the expected films, TV shows, etc. that blockbuster movies do here. A country, after all, that has accorded comics a level of respect that we are only recently giving to our own. Despite this, due to the language and the culturally-specific nature of the material the book took decades to get translated into English in its entirety-- its twenty-eight volume, hundreds-of-pages-per-book entirety.

Despite its length, the story never gets dull. Part of this is due to the nature of the medium-- comics usually just read faster than books on a page-per-minute basis being mosly drawings, but here it is coupled with Kojima's penchant for huge sections of purely illustrated sequences devoid of dialogue or narration. You'll get through it at a brisk pace. The artwork is extraordinary. Realistic in one sense, and very stylised in another, it recalls much in the way of classical Japanese brushwork in calligraphy and painting while still using a lot of the conventions of modern comics and manga. And despite the exaggerated nature of some of the characters physical abilities, or the fictitious details in some of the martial arts and people, the book is pretty firmly rooted in reality, taking itself very seriously without somehow seeming to overstate its drama. It's intense or moving without seeming forced or corny.

The lead character Itto Ogami is an absolute killing machine in a way no real person could ever be, but by the time you get halfway through the second book not only will you buy into his abilities you'll halfway believe he was a real person. The book really backs up even its most (seemingly-) exagerrated aspects with a historical grounding. I would've told you the duckfoot gun in the baby cart was complete bullshit, until I saw the museum-held drawings of just such a design. No one had ever used one the way Itto did in the story, but that there was at least a precedent for the concept. Wow. And almost everything in the book is that way, with a historical fiber running through everything. Not TRUTH, but verisimilitude at least.

There is a lot of drama in the work. The basic story is about Itto Ogami's quest for revenge against the Yagyu clan. The Yagu killed his wife, framed him out of his position, and destroyed his life. He takes his infant son along on journey to avenge his family and his name, becoming an assassin-for-hire to be able to live on the road and to acquire money to finance his goal. The thing that prevents this from just being an endless series of violent setpieces is the boy, Daigoro. Daigoro makes possible a lot of the moments that let us actually connect emotionally with Itto because Daigoro himself does. He is also Itto's link with the rest of humanity and frequently Daigoro is himself the story. We basically have to watch him grow up in this brutal time amongst all the bloodletting his father's chosen path brings... and yet his father is a man of honor in a dishonorable profession, and so Daigoro forces us to reconcile our feelings towards Itto as more than just an assassin.

Warning. There is a lot of sex and violence in this series. It takes place in feudal Japan in the 1700s so there is the requisite samurai and yakuza carving people up, but the nudity and exploitation quotient is quite high. It is typically done in a way that serves the story, showing the underbelly of prostitution or insanity or slavery, but to some readers the presentation will come off as gratuitous. Personally, I think to bring these situations home, the degradation or horror of them, you kinda need to shock your reader. Its one of the reasons I enjoy transgressive cinema so much. Sensationalist to be sure but balanced by equally profound or touching moments as the story moves along.

The translation is superb, probably a model for how all film, DVD, anime, TV show, and manga translators should approach their work. As far as non-comic media goes only Animeigo probably approaches the quality here. The language is natural, respectful, and in many instances they leave the Japanese intact (in English characters, duh) because there is no direct English equivalent AND because the reader really NEEDS to be educated as the story goes along. They could've substituted 'lord' for 'daimyo' every time daimyo is used, but they aren't EXACTLY the same thing, and it just helps the immersion of the reader to get on board with the culture a little more. There is a glossary in the back to help the English reader. It might be jarring to have to flip back to learn a definition, but it beats Dark Horse having to awkwardly figure out what alternate word (or often a whole phrase) to jam in their to keep you from having to do that. Their handling of honorifics, the -san, -sama, etc that suffix names when you address someone. They leave them in. You just need to learn what they are and go with it. Again, they define them in the back. Its worth the work getting used to it. Another illustration of the the translators difficulty; Daigoro calls his father 'Chan'. This is an honorific used as a term of endearment usually to young girls, or to and from little kids. So to say 'Sakura-chan' to a five year old girl is to call her 'dear Sakura'. Daigoro is abbreviating the phrase 'daddy dear', as three year olds might do to just the honorific. Just the -chan part. So it would not make any sense to an English reader to hear Daigoro calling his Dad 'dear' or 'sweet' all the time. In our culture it is just strange. So the translators change it to 'Papa'. A little kids endearment-laden term for his Dad. In my opinion, a REALLY good choice, but not a direct translation.

At times there are quite a few English expletives used which were Dark Horse's choice to represent words that don't mean the same thing in Japanese but still occupy the place of swear words in that language. Translators of anime run into this issue a lot. The word, 'chikusho' for instance, actually means 'beast' in Japanese and usually an expletive issued when someone is confronted with something they don't like. So most translators go with the word 'shit' or 'damn' because saying 'Beast!' in that context doesn't convey correctly to English speakers.

Since we're on the subject of the English translation, I will move to pointing out a few of the weaknesses in this work. There are times when a dialect needs to make an appearance in the story. People living in Japan can often tell what region a person hails from or what occupation they hold by peculiarities of language in the speaker, ie someone from Osaka speaks differently than a person from Tokyo. Rather the same as people from Boston or Mississippi speak distinctly different from someone from California, both in accent and the words chosen. So in order to convey rustic or less-educated people in Lone Wolf and Cub, the translators have chose to give them 'Americanized rustic' modes of speech. So you'll see lots of 'ain't' and 'no never mind'... that sort of thing. A little like black folks spoke in movies from the 40s. While I understand what the translators are going for, and the people in the story DO occupy an analgous place in society to the roots of that American dialect, it is just jarring to read that mode of speech in a story that is otherwise so obviously 'foreign'. I'm sure I'm not smart enough to have come up with a better method, but it was still one of the few elements actually taking me out of the story, and took me longer than other translation aspects to get used to.

Another problem is the format. The books are really REALLY small. I know this was done to keep costs down, and guarantee the whole series would sell. They are ten bucks a pop. So the whole thing will run you 280 dollars. I can see any bigger edition might be daunting to prospective buyers if they knew just how much of a commitment they were in for. Dark Horse continues to issue other series of similar subject matter in this same size. I'm sure that is for consistency of format with Lone Wolf which was the original release in these Koike/Kojima historical fiction manga.

But it is high time Dark Horse came out with a bigger edition. The Lone Wolf books have proven themselves to stand the test of time AND be great sellers. Even at substantially higher cost, these need to be in larger volumes that show the artwork to best effect, and perhaps even printing in color those sections that actually were in color during the manga's original serial comic release. And if you are going to re-release it, flip the pages back. Japanese manga are read 'backwards' to English readers. They read right to left. When Lone Wolf and Cub was first released in the USA it was (just like the size) considered too daunting to expect readers to accomodate reading backwards. Dark Horse was already making the fans accept Japanese feudal terminology, history, glossaries, and all that stuff. They needed to turn the needle back to 'accessible' in some way, so flipping all the art so that the reader could go left to right was the way to go. But it had the effect of making everyone left-handed, along with a few other peculiarities. In the years since this series came out, the American public has been coached into accepting the Japanese direction for reading. Almost all manga series now follow THEIR convention. Even the subsequent manga Dark Horse publishes from Koike/Kojima. Time to get the greatest manga ever back into line with its Japanese format and all other manga releases, expense be damned.

That's really about it. Apart from dialect stuff, and my own preferences for a bigger 'correct' edition, the series is awesome. You will laugh, cry, be stunned, and get an education through thousands of pages of the world's greatest comic.

And here's a cool thing: Dark Horse MUST re-issue these books bigger and flipped because they've acquired the rights to the sequel which began in Japan not to long ago. I think as of this writing it is up to six volumes or so. Artist Goseki Kojima died several years ago, but new artist Hideo Mori seems very respectful of the older material. Despite his style being different his Daigoro is a dead ringer from the pics I've seen. For this new manga to be issued in a decent edition, it would follow that its progenitor should be done at least that well.

More about this when Shin Kozure Okami (New Lone Wolf and Cub) finally comes out over here.

Why My Stereo goes to Eleven

I have a lot of interests, many bordering on passions…. er, too many probably.

Some, like martial arts, are lifestyle choices. Integrated into my weekly schedule, there’s actually set times devoted to practice, so its kind of placed before me on a regular basis and my interest keeps getting renewed through regular involvement. Any reading, practicing or communicating about the martial arts that goes beyond my scheduled sessions is fine, of course, but waxes and wanes like any other interest. Because practice is part of my routine, involvement (if not actual enthusiasm) means that attention to it never really gets to fall away completely.

Others, like video games or genre films, are pastimes that come and go on an almost cyclical basis. I always love this stuff, but interest in this sort of pastime isn’t always at a fever pitch. Currently I’m in video game mode (obviously, given their dominance in this blog), with a fair focus on manga (actually a media form along with anime that is seminal to the development of video games, though my interests don’t normally dovetail them together) as well. Current manga being read: Monster, Yagyu Ninja Scroll, Path of the Assassin, Berserk, and Initial D.

Still other interests are sort of always buzzing in the background. I like to read, so I’ve always got a book or periodical being worked through at any given point. I’m particular towards SF and horror, but I try to work classic literature into my book reading, and various lifestyle publications into my magazine list. At times this sort of interest can rise up to dominate my free time. That usually happens if I discover a new author or series or a favorite author comes out with a new work. Currently reading: Lukashenko’s DayWatch and various H.P. Lovecraft stories. The Lovecraft is of course a revisit. He’s a read-many-times staple author.

I don’t really ignore interests that aren’t currently front-and-center. They just don’t get equal time all the time. I suspect most people are like this. They find an interest, thoroughly work it, then if they don’t lose interest altogether, they at least backburner it for awhile and come back to it down the road when some new inspiration comes. I might be spread a little too thin. Having a lot of things you are interested in (and maybe more importantly, conversant in) makes for a more appealing person, but you’ll never get the most out of anything you do, if you don’t have focus. As with most people, I’ve had my share of interests that I got what I could out of them and then let them go, but I’ve been around long enough to where I’m not really adding any wholly new arenas… just circling around in the ones I already know and love.

This brings me around to music. Specific to me, listening (not playing) heavy music. If there was one interest/pastime/hobby/whatever that could be called my mistress this would probably be it. In this blog I’ve talked about video games (a lot!), martial arts, and racing. I’ve now mentioned film, manga, and books in this entry. I will probably get ‘round to hobby painting/modeling, wargames, anime and even booze. All this stuff... but the one big constant, the wallpaper in the background that is ‘visible in every shot’... is music. Through all the interests that have come and gone, changes in life, and places I’ve lived, I’ve never let my love for music dim.

Oddly, given my love for music, my appearance, and a lot of my lifestyle choices, I’m not actually a musician. I can keep decent time or rhythm, and I have reasonable manual dexterity to where I could probably learn an instrument relatively quickly (given other limitations inherent in trying to learn as an adult). People sometimes think I’m in a band, but more humorously (though tiresome) is the sheer volume of folks that think I look specifically like Peter Steele, vocalist for Type O Negative. I'll detail my opinion on this resemblance at a later date. Anyway folks, I’m not a musician. I’ve never been in a band. My music interest, HAS influenced my dress and style sense. So in expressing myself, I am sort of cultivating the band member look. Part of this comes from the many years I worked for Games Workshop. That company has a very image-conscious, rock and roll, guns and thunder mindset that cultivates ‘creative types’. So when you spend your work hours (the majority of your life) in an environment of cool, where being non-conformist is fine… well, you take it to heart. I didn’t quite grow up in some ways. That’ll maybe explain the hair, the music, the clothes, all my ‘juvenile’ interests, and of course, this blog.

Heavy music? A euphemism. I’m fuckin’ metal. There it is. The heaviest music is still metal. I’d like to think I’m a bit more cultured/cultivated than the stereotype (see Deathklok), and I’ve certainly met my share of metalheads that were not just beefy beerhounds in black t-shirts. Maybe it would be more correct, in a don’t-judge-me stereotype avoidance thing to say ‘rock’, but I have to face facts, ‘rock’ just isn’t specific enough. I DO like other kinds of music too, don’t get me wrong. As in all things, I think a person needs to be well-rounded, having at least some experience in things outside their normal sphere. I listen to the Beatles, Bowie, a lot of goth rock and various forms of industrial music.

But at the end of the day, I’m a metalhead. I’m not sure why I’m coming out of the closet in the blogosphere today—I’m already well out, and a town eccentric after a fashion, in real life. I guess this is the preface to why some blog entries will be dominated by opinions in music when music (metal) isn’t specifically thought of as a fanboy interest. Well, people can be just as geeky about anything. I’ll try to restrain myself on the volume of music entries.