Anime
Bakuman is a refreshing title
It was recently announced that Bakuman is getting a 3rd anime season, and this is a good opportunity to discuss the uprising popularity of Bakuman as a Weekly Shounen Jump manga. Bakuman is a very popular manga which runs neck to neck with manga giants like One Piece and Naruto. It has managed to claim itself a place among the top 5 most popular Jump series, which is why a 3rd anime season is being announced for it even though the 2nd season is still currently airing. And yet Bakuman is not your run-of-the-mill Shounen Jump manga.
A small introduction to the series is due. Bakuman is a series about several aspiring manga artists. In the beginning it only focuses on an aspiring manga artist named Mashiro and his aspiring writer friend Takagi. They decide to combine their talents and make a great manga together. After a while more characters (and manga artists) are introduced. The series shows how the manga artists struggle to enter the tricky business world of manga and what hurdles are thrown in their way as they enter it. In a nutshell it is a manga about making manga. Bakuman is well grounded in reality and doesn’t have all the aliens/monsters, super powers and special moves that are staples of typical Shounen Jump series. Moreover you won’t find any villains in Bakuman (unless you count grumpy editors as villains), there is only a small pool of characters to follow and these characters never battle each other or have any physical confrontations. Heck, even fanservice is kept to a nil!
Have no misconceptions though, Bakuman is 100% Weekly Shounen Jump material. The series maintain a constant feeling of advancement and achievement. The main characters strive to create a manga, fail, rise again and learn from their mistakes. They have dream and act to achieve them. Does having no battles mean having no tension? Hell no. Bakuman is rife with cliffhangers. Will the main characters’ manga succeed or flunk? Can they make the deadline in time? What happens when one manga artist collapses due to overwork? What is the best trick the artists can come up with to attract more readers? Bakuman can deliver tension when it’s due. I find Bakuman to be a very mature and refreshing series. Any unnatural occurrence or mystical powers would have just watered-down the experience. I expect realism from Bakuman. When I watch the Bakuman anime I watch it to see believable human interaction, intelligent human thinking and a decent paced plot. It also helps that this series has zero fillers. It probably won’t be remembered as one of Shounen Jump’s greatest series of all time, but future Shounen Jump series should learn from Bakuman. Learn to be fresh, break the mold and appeal to new audiences.
If you like mature and innovative series give Bakuman a shot.
Itsudatte My Santa! DVD Review
The Itsudatte My Santa! DVD review is up in the review section. Here’s a direct link.
I’ve always loved Akamatsu Ken’s manga. Love Hina was one of the first manga I read and to this day I regard it as a masterpiece and a milestone in the harem genre. I’ve since read Itsudatte My Santa! and A.I. Love You and found both to be decent. Today I follow the Negima! manga as it comes out in the U.S. and am quite enjoying it.
It is because I hold Akamatsu’s manga in such high favor that I find the anime adaptations of his titles to be so disappointing. The anime adaptation of Love Hina really turned my down and the Negima! series and follow-up OVAs felt really corny. I did find the Negima!? series to be an interesting experiment, but that is because it presented an alternative version which I couldn’t compare to the original manga material. How come the anime adaptations of Akamatsu Ken’s works tend to be such a letdown? Perhaps Akamatsu’s manga are too detailed for their own good? Or are his character reactions, which never cease to surprise me, unfit for animation? Maybe it’s the animation studios’ fault for not capturing that magical Akamatsu feel?
Either way if you’ve only seen the anime adaptations to Akamatsu’s manga and felt disappointed I urge you to pick up the manga and give them a second chance. Kodansha’s upcoming Love Hina omnibus releases seem like a good place to start.
Fate/Zero is an anomaly
I’m not immune to the holiday season and like many others have found myself wondering across different online stores looking for those illusive Christmas sales. The Right Stuf! is one of my favorites among those stores, and since it had a “12 days of savings” event in which each day brought a slew of new discounted products I’ve visited it frequently in the last few days. It was during one of these visits in which I encountered a strange sight. As I was scrolling down my web page, which was filled to the brim with discounted goods (some of which sold for less than 10$) I found myself looking at a link to the preorder page for Fate/Zero. This preorder held a hefty $379.98 price tag for non-U.S. costumers which, due to me being accustomed to the low price tags the holiday season brought forth, put me at a loss for words. I did expect Type Moon and Aniplex to make this collectible pack an exclusive expensive product. But this must be a record in greediness.
Let me explain just how this release is different than all those other expensive Japanese market Blu-ray and DVD releases. I’m not a novice when it comes to Japanese market prices. I’ve bought my fair share of Japanese Blu-rays, some of which cost me up to 300$ for a box set of a whole series. But here lies the catch – this upcoming Fate/Zero box set contains only half of the series’ episodes. The second half will cost you another $379.98, which comes to a total of 760$ (tax and shipping expenses for anyone living outside the U.S. not included). To be honest with you, there have been more expensive releases in Japan, the most famous of which being the Card Captor Sakura Blu-ray release. This remastered Blu-ray edition was split into two collections (the Clow Cards act and the Sakura Cards act) each bearing the price tag of 90,000? for a whooping combined price of 180,000?! (This translates to about 2,304$).
- The upcoming Fate/Zero Box. Will you be buying it?
So Fate/Zero is not the most expensive piece out there, but I can’t help feeling that all those who buy both Fate/Zero Blu-ray sets will still essentially be missing half a series. Fate/Zero is the prequel to Fate/Stay Night, which was released on Blu-ray in Japan but was never released on Blu-ray in the U.S., and probably never will. Even if it was, will you be willing to pay another 760$ for it? Will you end up paying 120,000? to own a complete set of both Zero and Stay Night?
Fate/Zero is an anomaly – It’s only half a series and is split further into two 1/4 collections. I’m a Fate/Stay fan, but I’m also a conscious consumer, and I call bogus. Price is usually not an issue when it comes to buying a physical copy of your beloved masterpieces. But the sky does have its limits, and most of us aren’t astronaut.
FLCL Blu-ray Review
The first review is here! The FLCL Blu-ray review has been added to the review section. You can also access it directly here.
I’m a big fan of Ghost in the Shell and the intellectual stimulus it injects into the anime world. The… ∞
Any contemporary anime viewer has, to some extent, been exposed to moe in one form or the other. Moe can… ∞
In 2012 we were graced with a unique short film called Death Billiards, which aired as part of the Young… ∞
The 2014 autumn anime season had a few excellent shows with high production values. It also had a considerable amount of low profile shows… ∞
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Hanasaku Iroha: Home Sweet Home is not about the Kissuoiso. Unlike the… ∞
The 2014 autumn anime season is one of the strongest, most robust, anime seasons in memory. As a result the offerings this… ∞
Good Smile Company's Nendoroid figure line has been with us for some years now. It had its fair share of… ∞
The fall 2014 anime season is here and its time to catch up on what's new and hot. So we've… ∞
Can you guess who is the character Goodsmile chose to depict in their latest Nendroid figure? I couldn't blame you if you can't. This is the newly announced Nendroid figure… ∞