When we launched Weekly Recon nearly one year ago (on June 20, 2007, to be exact), the goal was to highlight the best new manga arriving in stores each week with a mixture of off-the-cuff recommendations and brief reviews. The vagaries of the book distribution system, however, have frustrated our efforts to synchronize reviews and shipping lists. So this week, our column goes under the knife for a tummy tuck and a brow lift, with the goal of producing a leaner, meaner rundown of Wednesday’s new arrivals. You’ll still find the complete Midtown Comics shipping list here, as well as recommendations (now expressed as a top three or top five list) and, when appropriate, helpful hints for saving a buck or two. Reviews will be handled in a separate column, to be rolled later this month.

But enough about us—let’s talk about manga!

More than seventy new titles are appearing on store shelves this week, making this an especially onerous Wednesday for anyone with a serious manga habit. My top picks for the week:

CLAMP no Kiseki, Vol. 11 (Tokyopop): I’ll be honest: $19.99 seems a little steep for a beautifully produced thirty-two page magazine and three plastic chess pieces. But if you’re a rabid CLAMP fan, you’ll hate yourself in the morning if you pass up the opportunity to assemble a full run of CLAMP no Kiseki. And if you’ve just discovered this prolific, four-woman collective, you’ll be delighted to learn that volume eleven celebrates their current hit Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNICLES with artist interviews, full-color pin-ups, original manga, and exhaustive lists of tie-in products and publication milestones.

Color of Rage, Vol. 1 (Dark Horse) Does manga get any manlier than Kazuo Koike? This odd historical drama focuses on two slaves—one Japanese, one African-American—who escape from a transport ship, only to find themselves shackled together on the shores of Edo-era Japan. (No, this wasn’t conceived as a vehicle for Toshiro Mifune and Richard Pryor, though that pairing might have been sublime. Or sublimely awful—take your pick.) Expect plenty of sex, violence, and social commentary, as well as a few scenes that may strike American readers as naïve or misguided in their presentation of racial issues.

In the Starlight, Vol. 3 (NETCOMICS) Kyungok Kang’s unabashedly romantic sci-fi saga owes a considerable debt to Moto Hagio and Keiko Takemiya, both in terms of visuals—sparkling eyes! untamed manes! androgynously beautiful characters in tight pants!—and story—telekinesis! aliens! princesses switched at birth! The script is a bit tin-eared at times, but Kang’s artwork and richly layered characters more than offset a few clunky lines of dialogue.

King of Thorn, Vol. 4 (Tokyopop): Jurassic-sized lizards and killer plants terrorize a group of seemingly ordinary souls who waited out a pandemic in cryogenic sleep. The plot has a paint-by-numbers feel, but Yuji Iwahara’s knack for staging scary chases makes this monster mash an entertaining read.

Sand Chronicles, Vol. 2 (Viz): This lovely, understated story about a teenager coping with the fallout from her mother’s suicide is proof positive that “shojo” is not a catch-all term for “cheesy romances about boy-crazy girls.” Yes, it touches on such perennial coming-of-age topics as first love and fitting in, but manga-ka Hinako Ashihara’s gift for finding truthful nuance in everyday situations makes Sand Chronicles an engrossing read whether you’re thirteen or thirty-three.

Look for the complete shipping list after the cut.

From Eroica With Love, Vol. 11

By Yasuko Aoike
CMX, 224 pp.
Rating: 13+

After reading eleven successive volumes of From Eroica With Love, I am forced to admit that it is simply one of the best shojo series I have ever had the pleasure of getting my grubby paws on. And that’s a tall order, because the competition is fierce. I mean seriously, what can even series as good as Cardcaptor Sakura, Fruits Basket do in the face of Eroica? Hell, even Please Save My Earth and Banana Fish in their full-blown eighties might are not quite up to the task of taking down Eroica in its seventies might. But you didn’t come to this series to hear why this series is AMAZING (see Shaenon Garrity’s OMF entry on Eroica for that); you came to see whether volume 11 specifically rocks my socks. And good news: it does.

The basic premise of From Eroica with Love is that international master art thief Dorian Red, a.k.a. Eroica, gallivants around the world stealing whatever suits his fancy. The twist? Dorian is homosexual (gasp!) and his taste in art is not limited to inanimate objects. During one of his heists, Dorian crosses paths with NATO officer Klaus Eberbach, and becomes fixated with the major. Wackiness, innuendo, fruitiness and self–parody ensue—for more than 34 volumes!

This volume of Eroica, however, is a gem among gems and the series’ unfaltering wit reaches new heights. The strength of this manga is always most evident when the major’s and Eroica’s personalities are in direct contact, and this volume certainly does not disappoint. The first chunk of the volume kicks off with the Major in Germany in hot pursuit of “the laughing cardinals”, an entity that he knows nothing about. The major is chased by the KGB, and escapes them by the skin of his teeth only after a thrilling car chase and ridiculous airport dash. He and Eroica eventually run into each other, and as the major uncovers the mystery of the “laughing cardinals” their paths become inextricably intertwined (again!), much to Eroica’s delight. The wackiness and joy only increases from there with another car chase, innuendo-laden CPR, ridiculous technology, and a two page treatment of the major’s butt. Yes. After Eroica talks about Klaus’ butt and the major becomes extremely perturbed, Yasuko Aoike does nothing but draw a page of shots of the major’s butt as he and Eroica scale a mountain. Fabulous.

The art, some reviewers complain, is sub par. And I’m tempted to agree. Eroica’s strength does not lie in its serviceable art: it lies in its incredibly witty dialogue and engaging plot. Compared to other classic shojo titles (maybe with the exception of Banana Fish) like To Terra or The Rose of Versailles, Eroica’s art isn’t really anything special. The character designs for the Major and the Earl are quite good however, though the secondary characters look very rough and obviously received a lot less care. The backgrounds in the panels are similarly unimpressive, relying often on screen tones or speed lines. It is rare that the merely average art gets in the way of the epic adventure, though.

Though From Eroica with Love is never going to be accused of being the deepest manga ever, I would certainly proclaim one of the funniest and most satisfying. It does what a comic, should: you walk away from it feeling satisfied and still thinking about the world. I can’t wait to see where the story goes next. The teaser promises that Klaus will actually send his men to Alaska as punishment for their uselessness. I couldn’t be more psyched.

Volume eleven of From Eroica With Love is available now.

VANCOUVER, BC — For the first time, the Vancouver Art Gallery will bring the worlds of anime, comics, cartoons, video games, manga, graphic novels and contemporary art together in one exhibition. Offering an innovative and dynamic survey, KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art reveals the uniqueness of each medium, while uncovering their histories, interrelations and future trajectories. On view from May 17 to September 7, 2009, the exhibition is co-curated by some of the art forms’ most influential artists and cultural producers, including Maus author Art Spiegelman, The Sims creator Will Wright, comic artist Seth and animated feature film director Tim Johnson. Conceived and developed by Vancouver Art Gallery senior curator Bruce Grenville, the exhibition will travel to a New York City arts institution in March 2009.

“The Vancouver Art Gallery is committed to fostering new and dynamic understandings of visual culture. With the exhibition KRAZY!, we seized a tremendous opportunity to forward the study of some of the world’s fastest growing art forms,” said Kathleen Bartels, director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. “Despite the pervasive presence of these media, little has been done to assess the ties that bind them. By offering an interdisciplinary account in a major survey exhibition for the first time, we will illuminate their importance as a sustained cultural force.”

One of the largest exhibitions ever organized by the Gallery, KRAZY! will occupy two entire floors of gallery space and is designed in collaboration with Tokyo-based architectural firm Atelier Bow-Wow—a design team renowned for their understanding of informal culture and ability to enhance communal visual experiences. Divided into seven sections defined by medium, the exhibition takes viewers through ever-changing gallery environments, which include a mini-theatre for viewing animated cartoons and anime, immersive video spaces and innovative reading environments for visitors to experience a deluge of manga, graphic novels and comics. Built to ensure visitors are exposed to the full breath of the media, the exhibition comprises more than 600 artworks, including original sketches, concept drawings, sketchbooks, storyboards, production drawings, films, video games, animation cels, three dimensional models, sculptures, books, manga and much more.

The artists and works in the exhibition were selected by a group of co-curators, including Bruce Grenville, the exhibition’s coordinating curator and curator of the visual arts section; Tim Johnson, curator of animated cartoons; Kiyoshi Kusumi, curator of manga and anime; Seth, curator of comics and graphic novels; Art Spiegelman, curator of comics and graphic novels; Toshiya Ueno, curator of manga and anime; and Will Wright, curator of video games. Each curator was invited on the strength of their unique knowledge of their particular field, favoring practitioners, artists and cultural producers who are highly regarded for their work. Using their strong historical knowledge, each curator was asked to select a small group of artists who had made a significant contribution through a particular work or body of work. To give the overall selection historical context, curators selected precursors in their respective fields, artists who had established their given genres and artists who are leading the way to the future.

“The co-curators, who are also co-authors in the publication that accompanies the exhibition, are among the most active and sought-after practitioners in their respective fields. Despite their own vigorous workloads they shared their extraordinary insight and experience of this art,” said curator Bruce Grenville. “No one person could have selected the work in this show, but collectively we have drawn a new map of the world of visual culture.”

KRAZY! is a rare opportunity to see artworks that have shaped the history of contemporary visual culture, including Art Spiegelman’s drawings for the first three-page version of his Pulitzer prize-winning Maus; George Herriman’s last three drawings for Krazy Kat; Lotte Reiniger’s 1927 The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the first feature-length animated cartoon; a sneak preview of Will Wright’s groundbreaking video game Spore; and an extraordinary selection of drawings from Yuichi Yokoyama’s latest manga, New Engineering. The exhibition also includes works by Moyoco Anno, Lynda Barry, Marcel Broodthaers, Chester Brown, Cao Fei, Milt Gross, Pierre Huyghe, Ichiro Itano, Tim Johnson, Yoko Kanno, Satoshi Kon, Harvey Kurtzman, John Lasseter, Roy Lichtenstein, Christian Marclay, Winsor McCay, Sid Meier, Shigeru Miyamoto, Junko Mizuno, Mamoru Nagano, Claes Oldenburg, Mamoru Oshii, Katsuhiro Otomo, Nick Park, Raymond Pettibon, Seth, Iwatani Toru, Chris Ware, Masaaki Yuasa and many more.

American Express, the presenting sponsor of the Gallery’s landmark 2004 exhibition Massive Change: The Future of Global Design, partners with the institution again, providing the largest corporate sponsorship ever secured by the Gallery.

“American Express is proud to be the presenting sponsor of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s KRAZY! exhibit, and to play a role in bringing this unique survey of contemporary visual art to the public,” said Denise Pickett, President & CEO, American Express Canada Inc. “We want to help enrich our diverse culture by supporting and celebrating a broad range of arts and culture, and KRAZY! offers a perspective on contemporary visual culture that gives us an opportunity to do just that.”

The Gallery also greatly appreciates the significant contribution provided by the exhibition’s supporting sponsor Vancouver Foundation.

The Curatorial Team

Bruce Grenville (Coordinating Curator and Curator – Visual Arts)
Bruce Grenville is senior curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He has organized many innovative exhibitions, including Massive Change: The Future of Global Design an exhibition which described a new world of design in which the goals and means of production had radically changed for the better; The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture, a thematic survey of the image of the human machine in art and popular culture from the early 19th century to the present; and The Post-Colonial Landscape Project, a six year series of exhibitions and a book which examined the land and its representation within the colonial and post-colonial state.

Tim Johnson (Curator – Animated Cartoons)
Tim Johnson is an animator and feature film director. He made his feature-length directorial debut in 1998 with DreamWorks first computer animated feature, Antz (1998), starring the voices of Woody Allen, Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone. His most recent film, Over the Hedge (2006), was both a critical and commercial success and further solidified Johnson’s reputation as one of the preeminent animation directors in Hollywood.

Kiyoshi Kusumi (Curator – Manga and Anime)
Kiyoshi Kusumi is a freelance writer and cultural critic. He was formerly the editor-in-chief of the Japanese art journal, BT Magazine. Kusumi is currently the editor of the Japanese manga magazine Comickers and is credited with identifying and naming the Nouvelle Manga movement. He is an established art critic and cultural theorist and is considered a global authority on manga.

Seth (Curator – Comics)
Seth is the pen name of Gregory Gallant, a Canadian comic book artist and writer. Considered one of the best cartoonists of the past decade, Seth’s distinctive style has been featured in The Washington Post, Details, The New York Times, Spin and The New Yorker. Drawn and Quarterly has published his work in both comic book and graphic novel format and he has contributed cover illustrations for a diverse range of publications, including Fantagraphics’ best selling Complete Peanuts series.

Art Spiegelman (Curator – Graphic Novels)
Art Spiegelman is an American comic artist, editor and critic, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic memoir, Maus. Spiegelman has been instrumental in the development of the comic medium, both for his support of emerging comic artists and for his role in creating a broader acceptance of comics as an art form. Spiegelman is currently the editor of a children’s comic anthology, Little Lit, and has recently completed a compilation of his New Yorker submissions called Kisses from New York.

Toshiya Ueno (Curator – Manga and Anime)
Toshiya Ueno is a sociologist, media theorist and critic who lives and works in Japan and Amsterdam. He is currently an associate professor in the Expressive Cultures Department at Wako University, Tokyo. He has written numerous articles, essays and reviews on media, rock/pop music, film, contemporary art, architecture and urban design.

Will Wright (Curator – Video Games)
Will Wright is an American computer game designer and co-founder of the game development company, Maxis. He is best known for creating groundbreaking and genre defining computer games like SimCity and The Sims. His upcoming release, Spore, is the most highly anticipated computer game of the past decade and the game’s scope and level of player interactivity are expected to revolutionize the video game industry. He is considered an industry pioneer and one of the most influential and innovative designers of our time.

Toronto, ON – Mar 5, 2008 – Street Fighter® is one of the most influential video game franchises of all time. It launched the head-to-head fighting game genre and brought together millions of players around the globe to do battle, first at arcades and later, across a variety of home consoles. 2008 is the 20th anniversary of the franchise and to celebrate the property’s rich history UDON Entertainment is producing an all-new full color art book – Street Fighter Tribute.

The Street Fighter fans who were young players when the franchise first launched are now grown up, but their love of the game continues. This high quality art book will showcase a cross section of brand new artistic interpretations of the Street Fighter characters in a series of full size pin-up style illustrations. The book will launch at this year’s Comic-con International: San Diego as part of Capcom®’s Street Fighter Celebration content.

UDON artists and other comic, video game and freelance illustrators have been invited to interpret their favorite Street Fighter characters for inclusion in this special book. Along with these invited artists UDON is sending out a widespread open art submission call to the video game fan artist community to submit artwork for possible inclusion in the tribute volume.

You could be part of Capcom history as part of the Street Fighter Tribute art book and have your artwork showcased alongside top names in the industry! It’s time to show UDON and Capcom your unique vision of Street Fighter!

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND FULL CONTEST RULES:
http://www.udonentertainment.com/blog/?page_id=86

ABOUT UDON ENTERTAINMENT
UDON is an award-winning Canadian-based art collective formed in 2000 to provide high-quality creative services to the entertainment industry. Its client list reads like a who’s who of the business and includes Alliance/Atlantis, Capcom, DC Comics, Gamepro, Harmony Gold, Hasbro, Konami, Marvel Comics, Nintendo, Random House, Score, TDK Interactive, ToyBiz, White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast and Wiz Kids amongst others. In addition to client work, UDON also publishes official comics, manga, and artbooks based on Street Fighter®, Darkstalkers™, Rival Schools™ and Exalted. More information about UDON can be found on the company web site, www.udonentertainment.com.

ABOUT CAPCOM
Capcom is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment for game consoles, PCs, handheld and wireless devices. Founded in 1983, the company has created hundreds of games, including best-selling franchises Resident Evil®, Street Fighter®, Mega Man® and Devil May Cry®. Capcom maintains operations in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Tokyo and Hong Kong, with corporate headquarters located in Osaka, Japan. More information about Capcom can be found on the company web site, www.capcom.com.

Street Fighter is a registered trademark of Capcom U.S.A., Inc. Capcom, Darkstalkers, Resident Evil, Rival Schools, Mega Man and Devil May Cry are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Capcom Co., Ltd., in the U.S. or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective holders.

My coverage of the ICv2 conference held at New York Anime Festival continues with this final ICv2 panel on technology. You can listen to the un-edited audio I recorded of the panel here. I hope to clean up the levels later for my podcast.

ICv2: Technology and the Otaku

Panelists included:

Peter Heumiller, VP of Content Development at Comcast
Daniel Marks, VP of Strategy and Business Development at Viz
John Nee, Senior VP of Business Development at DC Comics (CMX)
Jeremy Ross, Director of New Product Development, Tokyopop

Out of all the ICv2 panels at NYAF, this one is of the most interest to internet fans of anime and manga. Some of us live online, denizens of cyberspace, crawling the web for new content and the latest technology. You know who you are!

Each of the companies represented on the panel; Viz, CMX, Tokypop, and Comcast, are doing their best to find the next market model to deliver anime to you, the consumer, in a legal fashion not involving DVDs. It’s just like how the iTunes store provided a legal alternative to music piracy and destroyed Tower Records in its wake. Just like that!

Moderator Milton Griepp opened by asking the panelists what each of their companies is doing, exactly.

Viz is offering a lot of free content (to the U.S. only) on Toonami Jetstream. Although Daniel Marks did not say so on the panel, I have heard from Cartoon Network that the reason the Toonami block is no longer on television is because Cartoon Network started pouring money into web content a couple of years ago. I went to go check out Toonami Jetstream just now, but apparently Mac users are not supported. Damnit! I wanted to watch Eyeshield 21 in a legal fashion, but I guess I’m forced into piracy… It’s not even on DVD!

Viz also began digital downloads with the Death Note anime. Although they haven’t started yet, they hope to do something with digital manga in the near future. Comcast is offering a lot of free content as well as user submitted content. John Nee from DC is bypassing magazines and offering things on the web.

Jeremy Ross of Tokyopop spoke like a technological evangelist. Tokyopop is offering a ton of web content and services. He emphasized that the free online samples for OEL helped promote Dramacon among skeptical fans. Tokyopop is even offering cell phone manga for $5 a month.

Griepp asked the panelists how anime and manga consumers are different from other consumers. Ross answered that Tokyopop’s customers are tech-saavy 13-20 year olds. Nee claimed that books won’t go away in the near future. Peter Heumiller of Comcast said video on demand is perfect for anime, since it’s an electronic “sell through”. Heumiller also runs Exercise TV, which is the only other VOD station I have used. Heumiller could not reveal the demographic statistics of his VOD customers.

Griepp asked the panelist how they can compete with the free content of the internet. Daniel Marks from Viz had this to say:

“The problem rests in how animation is made in Japan. Animation is – the day before it is aired – the final scripts are done – they deliver* literally hours before it’s aired. So we can’t get the materials in the United States in time to combat illegal downloads. And so until the Japanese system changes it’s going to be very hard to fight against someone who downloads it, has it subtitled and up ready for download worldwide within a day. There is no way to combat that.”

Having worked in television, I can tell you that when Marks refers to the “delivery” of an episode, he means the completed digibeta tapes (or whathaveyou) are delivered ready-to-air to the television network who commissioned the show. The American cartoon show I worked on completed final delivery typically four to six months before an episode’s air date. Cartoon Network needed the shows well ahead of time to develop promotional material and distribute the episodes to its partners worldwide. I was surprised to learn how close anime companies cut their schedules to the air date!

Heumiller agreed that Japan needs to change their delivery techniques to a digital system. Instead of a production coordinator driving videotapes to the TV studio the day before the show airs (like in Paranoia Agent) the Japanese could FTP shows to the broadcasters.

Griepp asked the panel about trends in stopping electronic piracy.

The panelists agreed that although movies, television, and music are one experience, reading a book is fundamentally different experience. Scanslations and free online samples help sell physical books. Once you’ve seen an episode of anime, you’ve had the full experience. Thus, anime is in trouble while manga booms.

Marks responded, “Cease and desist letters are effective for about five minutes.” Part of the problem, according to Marks, is that bittorrent sites are frequently not based in the U.S. The laws are different in the Netherlands and China, for example. A legal alternative to piracy is the best way to fight it – and it must be at a price people are willing to pay.

Ross claimed pirate sites want to work with the industry, but the industry sees this as fraternizing with the enemy.

“You can’t say it’s like hire the hackers,” Ross elaborated. “But I think there’s going to be creative solutions other than playing a game of whack-a-mole that we’re gonna see spin out over the next couple of years… We don’t just need more and better cops.”

Ross brought up the example of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-wish album. Ross believes in direct distribution with no middle men, although it seems that might put him out of work as an manga middle-man himself.

Griepp asked the panel their opinion on pricing structures.

Both Heumiller and Marks agreed that no one market model has been proven to work yet, so everyone is trying a little of this and a little of that. Heumiller commented that money is moving away from linear advertisements and towards broadband and VOD. Advertisers want fewer 30-second spots and more graphic overlays.

Ross, still in full-on visionary mode, praised Google AdSense. He believes service-based advertising is a good way to reach niche audiences as opposed to how something like Coca Cola advertises. Ross hinted earlier in the panel that Tokyopop might move towards a system like livejournal, wherein content is ad-supported, but users can pay to make the ads go away.

Griepp asked about the pace of conversion to digital delivery – particularly on handheld devices and cell phones.

Tokyopop is already aggressively pursuing these options. Ross mentioned the Amazon upgrades program and said that Tokyopop is currently making high resolution copies of their books so they are ready to go into whatever digital realm Tokyopop needs them in. Tokyopop is even producing screen-resolution copies of all their titles, so if you buy a book you could potentially own a complete digital copy of that book as well. The moire problems in manga screentones are a serious hurdle, however.

Tokyopop has been working with uClick to adopt manga to cell phones and break it down into a frame-by-frame experience. This comment really creeped me out. The manga creators intend for you to look at a certain page spread, and altering their work in this way changes the reading experience. It’s one thing if the work was created to be experienced digitally in the first place, like NetComics’ title The Great Catsby.

Comcast happens to own a very large ISP. According to Heumiller, mobile content will really take off in two years, and there will be cross-platform, cross-promotional content.

Marks pointed out that regrettably Viz does not own an ISP (I kind of wish they did… that’d be sort of cool). Japanese publishers, Marks says, still love paper. As the paper market decreases the Japanese are looking more into cell phone manga. The U.S. is still still behind in cell phone technology.

Nee is currently working with Flex Comics to make more mobile manga.

Ed Chavez of the Mangacast asked why, or rather if there is resistance from Japanese publishers towards making manga available digitally. I think he was referring to the proliferation of Netcomics’ Korean titles online, or how Tokyopop’s online titles are largely OEL.

Marks said that all the major Japanese publishers have their own ideas and agendas. There are certain rights issues, but it’s also a matter of timing. Many Japanese publishers are not happy with the cell phone technology available in the U.S.

Ross pointed out that creators have a lot of control over their titles in Japan. Editors and business-people are very hesitant to ask manga creators for permission to do something without good reason. However, in the last year the cell phone manga market has tripled. Ross is sure the rights will become more available in the next two years. He really likes comics on the iPhone because of the gestural interface.

Ross also brought up the excellent point that Americans commute by driving and have PCs everywhere, whereas the Japanese commute primarily by train, own fewer PCs, and are always using their cell phones to access the internet. Koreans, Ross continued, have more access to streaming video on their cell phones than anywhere else in the world – but it turns out Koreans prefer to quietly read manga on their hyper-advanced phones instead.

At one point Ross used the word “widget” as a verb, as in, “widgetizing,” which was somewhat alarming.

Much of what was said on this panel came up at panels during the rest of the convention.

If, like many manga lovers, you’ve been counting the days until volume one of Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk is available, you’ll be thrilled to know that the December issue of Shonen Jump features a generous, full-color preview of the series’s very first chapter. The issue also includes the conclusion to the long-running Yu-Gi-Oh and a short story by Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto. Click here for the full scoop. You’ll find the December issue of Shonen Jump in bookstores, newsstands, and comic retailers on November 6th.

UPDATE (3/2/08): Over at About.Manga, manga blogger Deb Aoki reports that Slam Dunk will be replacing Hikaru no Go in the May issue of Shonen Jump. I know some readers are disappointed by the change in line-up, but I think it makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint. Slam Dunk may be the best-selling manga of all time, but Viz faces several hurdles in getting American readers to embrace this series, not the least of which is an American aversion to sports manga. (Or at least sports manga that don’t star super handsome tennis players.)

If Slam Dunk hasn’t been on your radar screen, I encourage you to give it a try, especially if you’ve enjoyed series like Eyeshield 21, Whistle!, One Pound Gospel or the criminally under-appreciated Firefighter Daigo of Company D (a sports manga in disguise). Takehiko Inoue is surprisingly adept at comedy; his sprawling cast of aspiring b-ballers may remind you of Rumiko Takahashi or Makoto Kobayashi’s sweetly bumbling characters–and that’s a good thing. Want a sneak peek at the artwork? Then visit Sporadic Sequential, where John Jakala has been posting scans from the original Gutsoon! Comics edition of Slam Dunk.

UPDATE II (3/29/08): Viz has posted the first chapter of Slam Dunk on its website. Click here to read. (Link courtesy of Sporadic Sequential.)

UPDATE III (8/15/08): Our reviewer Michelle Smith offers an early review of volume one. Click here to read her thoughts on this shonen classic!

Manga: The Complete Guide

By Jason Thompson
Del Rey, 592 pp.

Jason Thompson claims to have read every manga title available in the English language. Thompson, a former editor of Shonen Jump magazine, is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide, a definitive Leonard-Maltin-style book. Every manga title published up through early 2007 is included in the book, complete with publication information, an age rating, a plot summary, a brief review, and a star rating. The book is also stuffed with essays about every manga genre (including “Cooking” and “Phantom Thieves”), a brief history of manga, a brief history of Japan (with manga examples from each time period) and a briefing on the Japanese language complete with a kana guide. The book also includes a section of mini-essays on manga-related issues that may concern parents, such as “Racism” and “Occult and Religion”.

Thompson set out to write a book for everyone, from fans of obscure manga to total n00b-Narutards, and from screaming yaoi fangirls to concerned members of the P.T.A. Yaoi and hentai (ero-manga) sections are regulated to the back of the book–Thompson suggested at MangaNext, “If you’re concerned about giving the book to your kid cousin you can just rip out the sections in the back.”

Some of the reviews and essays are not written by Thompson himself, but by industry professionals and trusted friends. Otaku USA magazine editor Patrick Macias contributes gekiga reviews; Overlooked Manga Festival’s Shaenon Garrity reviews the magical girl titles, and Carl Gustav Horn contributes to the book (look for his review of Gainax’s “Mega Comics”). Thompson claims that although he farmed out some of the reviews in order to be less biased (he just doesn’t like Saint Tail), he still read the series and edited or rewrote any reviews he felt were too far off the mark.

The star system was not Thompson’s idea, but suggested by Del Rey. Every manga series in the book is given a rating between zero and four stars. I found the star system to be extremely useful; it’s a quick way to avoid bottom-of-the-barrel manga junk and an easy way to pick out good titles. But are Thompson’s rating accurate? As soon as I picked up the book I started looking up my favorite and least favorite titles to see how my person rating system compares to Thompson’s:

I’m disappointed that Genshiken only receives three stars, but but I can live with that. How do Thompson’s rating compared to some of PopCultureShock’s reviews?

I also had to know what ratings Thompson gave to some of my least favorite titles:

Katherine wanted to know why Innocent W only got 3 stars. My podcast co-host Noah and I had our own conflicts with some of Thompson’s ratings: Both Happy Mania and Akira get four stars–does that mean Happy Mania is the Akira of josei? Thompson clarified with us in his interview that his ratings are accurate to within a half-star. He began writing the book with a five star system but cut back when he discovered he was giving five stars to classical manga such as Osama Tezuka’s works. Four stars evened the playing field for more recent titles.

Noah and I scoured the book for the lowest rated titles, some of which have been featured a two part series over at the Overlooked Manga Festival recently. There are only six titles given the lowest possible rating of zero stars:

Zero Star Manga
Eiken
Central City
Dark Angel
High School Agent
Night Warriors Dark Stalkers Revenge
New Vampire Miyu

Fourteen titles receive only a half-star rating, among them: Girls Bravo, Onegai Twins, Junk Force, and Kage Tora, the last of these featuring “…badly drawn cleavage.”

Many titles receive the prestigious four-star rating, among them:

Four Star Manga
Banana Fish
Berserk
Cromartie High School
Crying Freeman
Cyborg 009
Death Note
Eyeshield 21
From Eroica with Love
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Phoenix
Wounded Man

The difference between four and three stars is the quality jump between the original Battle Angle Alita (four strars) and Battle Angel Alita Last Order (three stars). The anthology Japan by 17 Creators receives four stars, but Secret Comics Japan receives only three stars (I think these two ratings should be flipped). I’m annoyed that Tekkon Kinkreet (listed as Black & White in the guide) receives 3.5 stars and is good throughout, while Death Note gets four stars but it turns into a river of vomit sometime around volume seven.

Within five minutes of opening Manga The Complete Guide I began a list of obscure, bizarre, and more often than not out-of-print titles I would like to read:

Erin’s Wish List
A,A¹ – by Moto Hagio, early shojo artist and author of They Were Eleven
Bass Master Ranmaru – a fishing manga e-book
Bow Wow Watta – veterinary manga by a prolific veterinarian
Bride of Deimos – by the artist of swan
Comics Underground Japan – 4 stars, contains “Cat Soup” short story
Dame Dame Saito Nikki – the author explains American culture in vignettes
Division Chief Kosaku Shima – salaryman manga
The Four Immigrants Manga – oldest title available in translation

This is just the A through F section of my general list. I also quickly wrote down all the four star erotic titles and four star yaoi titles, such as:

Four Star Ero-Manga and Yaoi Titles
Co-Ed Sexxtasy
Domin-8 Me
Embracing Love
Gerard and Jacques
Japanese Eroticism: A Language Guide to Current Comics
Pink Snipper
Shout Out Loud
Wild Rock

I’m not going to tell you which ones are yaoi.

Manga: The Complete Guide is an indispensable resource for aspiring and established manga fans. It’s an obvious purchase for librarians, a great resource for parents, and a great gift for the manga fan in your life. At only $20, it’s incredibly affordable. You can’t get two volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub (four stars) for $20!

I would like to see future editions of Manga: The Complete Guide, and maybe a hard cover collector’s edition of the book. Look for my interview with Jason Thompson and his MangaNext panel audio on this site and on ninjaconsultant.com in the near future.

Thursday

“Noah has to eat these,” Gerald says, throwing a bag of pork rinds into my (ethnically, but not religiously) Jewish boyfriend’s hands. Gerald videotapes Noah eating the pork rinds in the passenger seat. I don’t question our driver simultaneously videotaping – I’ve seen this before on the West Side highway, and Atlanta roads are safer at 11:30 at night. The hotel shuttle and public bus have stopped running. Gerald is our fellow podcaster and hotel roommate, he’s also saving us from a $45 cab ride, which is great, because unlike last year I can’t afford to be here.

“I’ve never had pork rinds before,” Gerald laughs in his semi-creepy way. I have only eaten pork rinds twice, and these are the worst of the two, I tell him. “Noah’s going to hell, and I have it on video!” Gerald laughs.

“He might be going to hell, but that’s not why,” I say, as Noah explains that Jewish hell isn’t so bad. Apparently they roll your sins out in a reverse-Katamari scenario. Sins like rollover minutes.

“I had to run out of our interview with Rob Fenelon and Walter Amos to pick you guys up.” Gerald is one of the three hosts of Anime World Order, the internet’s most informative English-language anime podcast. Walter Amos is a NASA scientist and a fan of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Rob Fenelon is a sandal-wearing consultant and very oldschool anime fan.

Friday

I was trying to avoid the “History of Magical Girls” panel but when I wake up on Friday I’m there in the magical pink heart of darkness. I already know about Magic Witch Sally I think bitterly, at least the Sailor Moon sitting behind me is learning something new. I think that pink haired cat girl sitting up front is about my age. Two years prior I had pink hair.

The panelist is Ed Hill¹, who Noah remembers from Akon 7 – the old days. Ed shows the crowd an impressive collection of clips from the 60’s and 70’s – not ripped from youtube but real, quality videostuff gotten through Ed’s connections. By the end of the panel I’m really enjoying myself. A clip from a 1998 show called Ako-chan has us cracking up – Ako-chan has the power of ’80’s cinema.

That’s what I’m after here at Anime Weekned Atlanta, the good stuff: crazy clips, oldschool fans, Waffle House, and a tour of Adult Swim. Cartoon Network’s Censor has lured us here with the promise of a Williams Street tour. The Censor is a Nine Inch Nails fan with an iphone and a serious vinyl toy collection. Friday we duck out of the convention to meet him.

Williams Street ranks on my top five list of cool offices, but not at number one, despite the bubble machine and fake hedge wall. It’s recently been redecorated to look “more like a cruise ship.” In one of the conference rooms someone has drawn Earthworm Jim on the markerboard and written a list of oldschool videogames. What meeting spawned this list? Was it even a meeting?

We do not get to chill with MC Chris and Space Ghost as I imagined. We do discover that the Super Deluxe conspiracy is part of Adult Swim. The Super Deluxe cubicle jungle is suspiciously empty.

The Censor gives us a tour of Turner Master Control and it is as impressive as the name implies. All of the Turner satellite video feeds are playing on one giant screen like the control room in Ghost in the Shell; Stand Alone Complex. A lone employee mans the room, and instead of watching forty or more television channels at once he’s reading the internet – truly a sign of our times.

The Censor kindly gives us a ride back to the convention, saving us another $30. Our podcaster friends have been invited to dinner with the Japanese guests, causing Daryl to skip out on the formal dance. One of his listeners had shelled out the $25 for Daryl’s “Fire and Ice Ball” ticket for a laugh, and now Daryl has botched the deal.

Anime Hell is as advertised; Hell. This is Dave Merrill’s convention, by god, and he has the best collection of weird/painful videos outside of youtube. My brain makes a snapping sound as Merrill plays an infomercial featuring children dressed as Bible characters singing Beach Boys songs with the lyrics replaced.

“It’s irritainment!” Merrill squeals during a long clip from 1970’s live action sentai (Power Rangers-style) show Lion Maru. I have only heard of Lion Maru from Otaku USA magazine. At Anime Weekend Atlanta you’ve got to know about these things in order get in with the really cool nerds.

I hope “irritainment” comes into common parlance. I madly scribble down the title Message From Space in my new Adult Swim notebook. It looks highly irritaining.

Next is the traditional “Midnight Madness” panel. Fans dub and recut anime into fanparodies. I am a fan of these works. A fan of fanparodies. Truly there is something wrong with me. What kind of depraved nerd is a fan of other, higher level nerds? Last year I missed “Fisting the North Star”. This year it’s a re-mastered edition of “Nescaflowne” by Studio Sodeki. I’ve seen it twice, but not in the last few years. It’s a reworking of the Escaflowne TV series and movie. The new plot is about coffee magnates and a girl with the ability to cause plot holes – it’s not far off from the real thing. It has a better ending.

Saturday

In the morning out hotel roommates drive us to a Waffle House where our waitress is missing her front teeth. She has a great accent.

Noah and I run the Anime World Order panel. Our podcast is the Ninja Consultant show, but AWO is busy recording a guests at another panel. Paul Chapman of the Greatest Movie Ever podcast helps us out. Daryl arrives mid-panel to make an appearance in front of his adoring fans. He introduces Noah as Gerald and says I’m Clarissa. One guy in the audience buys into it and refers to me as Clarissa for the rest of the panel. I’m too polite to stop him.

After the panel Noah and I chat with one of our listeners who we’ve only met once before, at AWA last year. A gaggle of Haruhi Suzumiya crowds the hallway as we talk. The Haruhi panel is full. I forced a nearby Haruhi to pose near the sign.

Later Noah and I catch the end of the “I [Heart] the ’70’s” panel, featuring Merrill and a friend’s kid named Ivy, who is about nine years old. Ivy vetoes Captain Harlock, calling it “stinky,” but approves of Galaxy Express 999. I make a note of it, and write down Lulu the Flower Angel.

No other anime convention has the guts to do so many oldschool panels. Anime Weekend Atlanta brings you panels devoted to a single year, panels like “Anime 1982″ and “Fandom Before Time”. When you’ve worked up a serious geek habit like I have, it’s hard to find nerd-gurus who really know what they’re talking about. The internets are overflowing with teenyboppers still debating subs versus dubs in their diapers, but at AWA I can meet the real thing – guys like Amos and Merrill and otaku gentleman Carl Gustav Horn.

At the Dark Horse Panel Carl Horn – the man himself – lays it down for the audience; this is Dark Horse’s 19th year of publishing manga. Old Boy won an Eisner, the sixth Eisner for Dark Horse.

“The future of manga is outside of Japan,” Mr. Horn says, referring to Japan’s shrinking population. Dark Horse is publishing CLAMP’s “Mangettes” which will have a simultaneous release in several countries.

Mr. Horn passes around samples of upcoming books. The hardbound Style School looks like required reading for comic artists – it covers artistic techniques in a how-to-Comikers-like-format. The Akira Club art book pulls out single panels from the Akira manga and lays them on single pages like art hanging in a gallery show. It’s an incredible book emphasizing the artistry of manga. It’s probably cheaper than buying all of the Akira manga, I decide.

CGH goes over other current and upcoming releases with very few new announcements. Dark Horse will be releasing the Blood+ manga and novels in January and March of 2008. Ghost Talker’s Daydream is a manga and anime title, the manga will come out in July of 2008. The Vampire Hunter D novels will hit shelves in November. Bride of the Water God is a manhua title set to be released on October 1st.

Two titles grab my attention: The Color of Rage is a Koike work set in the 1850’s about a Japanese guy who’s trying to get back into Japan and a shipwrecked foreigner. Japan’s closed door policy means both men will be killed if found out. Translucent is about a semi-transparent girl who can’t control her powers of partial invisibility. Volume one is available now, volume two comes out on Halloween, and volume three on January 30th, 2008. I email Katherine, who has long since taken over this Manga Recon column. Katherine is a ninja, and she’s already halfway through a review of Translucent. She’s always one step ahead…

The preview of Translucent on the Dark Horse webpage is disappointing. I was under the mistaken impression you could see through the girl’s skin and internal organs occasionally.

Outside of Carl Horn the best thing about Anime Weekend Atlanta is the Anime Music Video (AMV) contest. The AMV community turns up in droves at this con and my boyfriend is crazy for the stuff. We sit through hours and hours of the exposition videos before I can’t take it any more and set out in search of food.

A Log Home show is going on elsewhere in the convention center. I feel sorry for the poor bastards in blue polo shirts. This is too good of an opportunity and I grab a young man in a Viking outfit I recognize from a videogame and demand he stand near the “Log Home Show” sign. I take a picture. A nearby Log Home show employee looks annoyed.

The Subway in the mall food court is a scene from the End Times. Overwhelmed by hundreds of hungry costumed freaks and geeks the ice machine has broken down and ice is laid out in coolers on the floor. Cardboard boxes of straws and lids are open, sitting near the ice coolers – no time to stock the containers, only enough time to boxcutter open the crates.

I return to the AMV contest in time to see our friend dokidoki get a standing ovation for his send-up of an MPAA commercial. “Piracy is Awesome” the video concludes, and the video artist in the audience, for whom video piracy is serious hobby – are driven to their feet. The next video is an extremely detailed remake of Dire Straight’s “Money for Nothing” done with Cowboy Bebop characters in 3-D animation. It’s an impressive video – someone spent a lot of time on this – but it’s not the overall winner. The overall winner is set to a ska version of the Bumblebee Tuna theme and mixes together dozens of anime series replacing objects with cans of tuna. When it’s over the song is stuck in my head for a week and I end up buying a lot of tuna.

My fellow con-goers and I head to a steak house in the mall parking lot across the street. It’s the dead center of urban sprawl – most of America consists of Circuit Cities in a mall parking lots these days. Our waiter is a sweet young man with a soft southern accent who is blown away by our out-of-state IDs. We scare the crap out of the poor kid with our strange custom orders and New York ways.

Back at the convention hotel the moment I’ve been waiting for finally arrives; Carl Horn is having a party. Mr. Horn throws fabulous parties. Last year he projected French New Wave movies on the ceiling and a slideshow of classic art on the back wall. This year there’s a display of a Shitotsugh Lhadatt’s imperial outfit from Wings of Honneamise on a wooden semi-cross structure. Behind it is a miniature Japanese screen laid in gold and decorated with the faces of Hideki Anno and Hayao Miyazaki, photocopied from a poster of a conversation they had in 1987. Behind the screen a slide projector provides a backlight for the scene.

Mr. Horn serves Moscow Mules to each guest who walks in the door, greeting them in turn. Carl Horn is always a gentlemen, always wearing a suit, even to the Dark Horse offices where there is no dress code.² I make a poor attempt at conversation:

“I’ve only heard of Moscow Mules twice,” I begin, “Once in the book Speed Tribes; Days and Nights with Japans Youngest Generation.” Mr. Horn knows the book. Before I can go on and mention how I’ve only drank Moscow Mules in Japan, a very drunk young man approaches.

“I hear there’s real birch beer here!” the young man bellows, a little too loudly for the low-key party. The theme from Gunbuster 2 playing on a hidden ipod. The young man’s eyes are red and unfocused. Can’t he see I was trying to have a conversation here?

“Yes, birch beer,” Mr. Horn affirms, and repeats his cocktail party chatter about the history of the Moscow Mule and it’s popularization of birch beer. I’ve heard it before, since he’s gives the same spiel to everyone who walks in the door. I’m tremendously annoyed at the drunk kid, but CGH is patient with him. He’s a boddhisatva of infinite patience for fanboys.

Anime World Order and I head up to Dessloktoberfest, a different party in the hotel, dedicated to bad guy from Star Blazers (also known as Space Battleship Yamato). Last year the same party knocked my socks off – super-old fans had decorated the room with Desslok’s face (??) and served Matrix-reference red and blue punch, the red punch being non-alcoholic. I’m surprised to find it’s the same party again this year. Maybe it’s the same every year. Maybe Dessloktoberfest has been going on for all 13 Anime Weekend Altantas.

AWO is supposed to get their picture taken with Mr. Horn so we head back to the other party. My head is full of Moscow Mules, half a beer, and the blue punch but I’m still a horrible conversationalist. Mr. Horn talks a bit about Otaku USA magazine.

“I wrote that Tekkon Kinkreet article,” the words just bubble out like some sort of belch, a pathetic attempt at speech.

“I know, I read it.” Mr. Horn replies. And that’s all he says about it. He turns to Daryl Surat with a smile. Daryl idolizes Carl like a role model and Carl sees a lot of himself in Daryl. I’m jealous – or I was until I uploaded the photo:

Mr. Horn talks a bit about how much he admires Patrick Macias’s writing style. Even Carl Horn is jealous of someone else’s writing, and that makes me feel a bit better. My otaku-fu is weak. I must sit under waterfalls until my writing improves.

I am reduced to the role of camera-holder, taking pictures for everyone of Carl Horn standing with Anime Wold Order. Mr. Horn says he would’ve thrown this party in honor of Anime World Order again, like last year, except for the anniversary of Gainax and the new Evangelion movie.

Sunday

It’s 3 AM and we all go to sleep. Sunday is a horrible blur. My eyes are dry from lack of sleep. I meet some old friends for breakfast. The “Dubs Time Forgot” panel is horrible. Those dubs were best left forgotten.

Daryl is invited to sit in on Carl Horn’s annual Evangelion panel. Noah is annoyed. “The people who’ve never heard Carl Horn’s Evangelion speech before won’t get to hear it,” Noah whines. Nevertheless, the crowd enjoys Daryl’s counterpoints.

Clarissa and Gerald and Noah and Alison and I eat at P.F. Chang’s for lunch. I’ve never been to one and I’m amused to find it is exactly as parodied on South Park. We say goodbye to everyone at closing ceremonies and share a ride to the airport with Daryl Surat and a bunch of strangers, saving another $30 at least.

Noah and I lose Daryl in the impossibly long Delta security line. It’s probably the last we’ll see of him until next year at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008.

¹ Ed Hill is the author of Carl Horn’s favorite American doujinshi, “Fairy Princess Yukio Mishima,” collected in JUKU magazine.
² I have this on good information from a former employee.

Tekkon Kinkreet: Black & White (All in One)

By Taiyo Matsumoto
Viz, 624 pp.
Rating: Mature

Ed Chavez of animeondvd and the mangacast taught me everything I know about manga. At San Diego Comic Con this year Ed got his advance copy of Tekkon Kinkreet before anyone else – including the Vice President of Publishing at Viz, a young man named Alvin. At one of the Viz panels Ed pretended to lick his copy of Tekkon while Alvin watched, his jaw hanging open in surprise and jealousy.

Now that I’ve read Tekkon Kinkreet, I can say without hyperbole that Ed’s actions at the time were totally reasonable and appropriate.

The Story
Black and White are brothers and members of team Cat, a youth street gang with a chaotic neutral alignment. They live in Treasure Town, a run-down neighborhood in futuristic Osaka. Treasure Town is being cleaned up Rudy Giuliani-style by yakuza and alien real estate developers. Black feels a sense of ownership and fights to defend “his” city with a dose of the ultra-violence. White is prophetic and semi-retarted, and urges Black to take on the philosophy “Don’t worry, be happy!” About halfway through the book team Cat is being hunted to the death by alien assassins, and White is taken in by kindly policemen in an ad hoc witness protection program, breaking Black’s heart.

The Art
Tekkon looks like no other manga you’ve ever read – unless you’ve read Matsumoto’s other titles. Blue Spring is available in English, and Viz printed No. 5 several years ago. Viz is releasing the movie Ping Pong based on Matsumoto’s manga of the same name.

Tekkon’s art is fantastic. Matsumoto studied comics in France for several years, and completely changed his art style. Reading Tekkon is less like reading manga than it is like reading the best zine or underground comic ever created.

Matsumoto rarely uses screen tones (those gray dot patterns in manga) in favor of simple black and white lines. The line quality is thick, deep, dark, and interesting. The camera angles are amazing – much of the comic looks like it was shot with a fish-eye lens (like the Wong Kar Wai movie Fallen Angels). Buildings and landscapes bend in every direction, yet the perspective is never compromised.

The characters are not designed like “typical”¹ manga characters. You won’t find big eyes and small mouths here – the characters have little piggy eyes. Although everything in Tekkon is very stylized, Black and White are drawn with remarkable realism. They pose between chapter breaks like very real children. This realism makes the violence resonate disturbingly.

My Review
I really, really loved this book. It’s hard to tell right now if I’m just spazzing out about the title at the moment or if Tekkon really is a classic forever. Normally I’m not into police stories or gangster stories or stories featuring a 98% male cast, but Tekkon had all three and I still really loved it.

The dialog is masterfully done. I can’t say how much of that is the work of a careful translator and how much is Matsumoto being awesome. When the characters say philosophical things I totally buy it. The Grandpa character who gives the boys priestly advice might come off as a cliche in other stories, but in Tekkon he’s original and appealing.

I recommended Sexy Voice and Robo, but I’m requiring Tekkon Kinkreet as a title that you must own. It’s accepted in the comic book community that among the greatest graphic novels of all time are Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Maus – if you want to add some manga to that short list, I recommend Nausicaa and Tekkon Kinkreet.

The Presentation
Originally published in three volumes in Japan, Viz has collected the short series into one big omnibus edition. The paper quality is outstanding compared to the average manga volume. Although not quite up to Japanese standards of fancy-pants paper, the American edition is a lovely white paper with fine ink quality. A dust jacket features cover art that looks like the movie’s artwork, but underneath the dust jacket is the original Japanese cover design.

The book is flipped, and reads left-to-right. It was originally published left-to-right when it first came out in the 1990’s.

My only qualm is that the large size of the volume means that teenagers reading the average-sized manga paperbacks in bookstores may miss Tekkon, as it will be shelved closer to the graphic novels and oversized books.

Tekkon is so good I almost expect it to be in hardcover. I think Drawn & Quarterly fans and indy comics readers would enjoy Tekkon, and I wonder if they would take it more seriously if it was available in hardcover.

The Book and the Movie
You can read my longer review/essay of the Tekkon film in Otaku USA Magazine issue 2. I reviewed the film without reading the manga first. Many of my complaints about the film structure are not problematic in the manga. Regrettably, one sour Village Voice review may have hit the nail on the head; the episodic nature of the manga made the film adaptation bulky and oddly paced.

The film is not a straight-up adaptation of the manga. Although it is spelled out in large bold letters in one panel of the manga “FLYING CHILDREN”, Black and White fly a lot less in the book compared to the movie. The reader must assume that Black got to the top of those telephone poles somehow, but the flying is much more obvious in the movie.

The manga backgrounds are odd and wonderful, and Arias’s adaptation of the backgrounds to the screen do them real justice without being identical. The CG and 2-D blend flawlessly as Black and White move through the streets of Treasure Town.

Although the book takes place in Osaka, the Treasure Town of the film is could be any city in any Asian country, and it’s also reminiscent of New York.

I can’t decide which media one should consume first. I really, really loved the Tekkon manga, but the film left me feeling a little cold. I can’t say I would’ve liked the movie better had I read the book first. I might have been disappointed, or I might have had low expectations and been impressed. I’m interested to hear what other people think.

Some Cultural Context
There are some things about the cultural context of Japan that the layman might miss on a read of Tekkon Kinkreet. Perhaps the most important of these is that crows in Japan are freaking huge. These monstrous crows sometimes attack garagemen and can peck people to death. When Black stands outside an office window with a crow on his shoulder, that is a huge crow and it’s f-ing terrifying, but you might not get it without seeing these giant birds for yourself.

The Japanese love uniforms, and every minor position in society has it’s own – even yakuza have a sort of uniform. In Tekkon’s futuristic Osaka, street gangs all have names and silly outfits. The Cats face off against the Dawn and Dusk brothers, a chocolate-themed gang, and a gang wearing black bodysuits with the numbers one, two, and three painted on the front. It’s a little like the move The Warriors.

The other thing you need to know about Japan is that they continually tear down old buildings to replace them with new ones. New Yorkers might think we know a thing or two about gentrification and urban renewal, but our city is very quaint next to Tokyo, which goes through urban upheaval at an alarming rate (when it’s not being destroyed by earthquakes, fires, bombs, typhoons, or Godzilla). The themes of loss and re-zoning will probably be lost on rural American audiences who have never had a similar experience.

In Japan the relationship between cops and yakuza are very different from the relationship that American police and the mafia have here. Yakuza crimes “don’t count” in the larger Japanese society. Yakuza businesses are accepted as at least semi-legitimate. Japanese cops do not carry guns. One character in Tekkon laments that he became a police officer instead of a yakuza (in Japan, being yakuza is an actual career choice).

The same cop whines throughout the story that he has not yet had permission to carry or fire a gun. Despite being a story about gangs and violence, Tekkon has only one gun, and when it’s used, it is a very powerful scene.

Recommended.

This review is based on complimentary copies provided by the publisher. The Tekkon Kinkreet manga will be available in the U.S. on September 26th, 2007. The DVD of the film will be released by Sony on September 25th.

¹ Like most anime/manga fans I have a problem explaining to outsiders that there is no “typical” manga style. Outsides often claim it “all looks the same” even when faced with Pokemon and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure side-by-side!

I’m fresh out of snappy intros this week, so I won’t mince words: you won’t find much on the new arrivals spinner rack at your LCS or Borders this Thursday. But if you didn’t bankrupt yourself buying all three installments of Naruto last week, you’ll find a few manga worth your hard-earned money.

Your best bet is the final volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. Deftly interweaving sci-fi episodes with period drama, Tezuka’s unfinished masterpiece inspires an SAT-worthy set of adjectives to describe its superb artwork and pointed commentary on human nature. If Tezuka isn’t your cup of tea, you might want to investigate Go! Comi’s newest series: Kanna, a seinen action title in which ferocious monsters pursue an adorable moppet across multiple dimensions, and The Devil Within, a shojo romance about a girl forced to choose a husband from a handsome trio of demon bachelors. (Sort of like Love Connection without Chuck Woolery.) For those who fancy a bit of the ultraviolence, Dark Horse offers the second installment of MPD Psycho. And for those facing PSATs this fall, Kaplan introduces an alternative to flash cards and vocabulary lists: test prep manga. Part OEL, part study aid, these enhanced graphic novels feature over three hundred of the most common words from the verbal section of the SAT in context. (Or should that read “in action”?) I’m curious to read the revised scripts for the three Tokyopop titles that got the “score boosting” treatment, as I’m having trouble imagining the Van Von Hunter crew uttering “aesthetic” or “syberite” under any circumstances.

REVIEWED THIS WEEK:

• Walkin’ Butterfly, Vol. 1 (Aurora)

SHIPPING THIS WEEK:

• Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Vol. 9 (Viz)
• Devil Within, Vol. 1 (Go! Comi)
• Excel Saga, Vol. 16 (Viz)
• FLCL, Vol. 1 (Tokyopop)
• Go Go Heaven, Vol. 3 (CMX)
• Great Adventure of the The Dirty Pair (Dark Horse)
• Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition, Vol. 3 (Dark Horse)
• Hunter X Hunter, Vol. 16 (Viz)
• Kanna, Vol. 1 (Go! Comi)
• Kaplan SAT ACT Psycomm, Vol. 1 (Kaplan/Tokyopop)
• Kaplan SAT ACT Van Von Hunter, Vol. 1 (Kaplan/Tokyopop)
• Kaplan SAT ACT Warcraft: The Sunwell Trology, Vol. 1 (Kaplan/Tokyopop)
• Lovers’ Flat (DMP)
• MAR, Vol. 15 (Viz)
• MPD Psycho, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse)
• Ninja High School Yearbook 2007 (Antarctic Press)
• Oh My Goddess, Vol. 6 (Dark Horse)
• Outcast, Vol. 1 (Seven Seas)
• Phoenix, Vol. 11 (Viz)
• Pieces of a Spiral, Vol. 9 (CMX)
• Project Arms, Vol. 17 (Viz)
• Shonen Jump (October 2007)
• Togari, Vol. 2 (Viz)
• XS Hybrid, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse; click here to read a review of volume one)
• Yakitate!! Japan, Vol. 7 (Viz; click here to read a review of volume four)

Walkin’ Butterfly, Vol. 1

By Chihiro Tamaki
Aurora, 154 pp.
Rating: OT 16+ (Older Teen)

When we first meet Michiko, she’s a foul-mouthed, foul-tempered nineteen-year-old with no career prospects, no friends, no money and, thanks to her reckless driving, no ride. A brief stint at a pizza parlor, however, proves life-changing. While making a delivery, Michiko finds herself backstage at a showing by Mihara, the enfant terrible of Tokyo fashion. Mistaken for one of Mihara’s models, the six-foot-tall Michiko is dolled up, decked out, and sent down the runway in a tight dress and a feather boa. The experience is humiliating, as both Mihara and the audience receive Michiko’s wobbling performance with jeers: can this ungainly creature really be a model? Yet after fleeing the stage in tears (and crashing the pizza parlor’s moped), Michiko finds new resolve: she’ll become a model and demonstrate to Mihara that she possesses the grace, confidence, and self-knowledge to dominate the catwalk. More importantly, she’ll transform herself into the kind of independent yet feminine woman that will wow her long-time crush Nishikino.

I’ll be honest: fashion seems like a disastrous career choice for the vulnerable Michiko, who hopes to redeem her poor self-image by becoming Japan’s Next Top Model. (Perhaps she didn’t get the memo about eating disorders and body dysphoria?) I also found it improbable that she’d never considered modeling before that fateful pepperoni order; in a country where the average woman just clears five feet, surely someone would have suggested to Michiko that she was tall enough to grace the runway. If you’re willing to overlook these minor details, however, Walkin’ Butterfly has much to offer the josei reader: a heroine who’s a believable mixture of public bravado and private anguish, a worthy love interest, a terrific villain, and a memorable cast of supporting players. (My personal favorite is Ryo Tago, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking agent who dispenses wisdom with the same lethal accuracy as some countries deploy missiles.) The artwork is also a big plus. Chihiro Tamaki has an energetic, sketch-like style that reminded me of Yayoi Ogawa’s. Like Ogawa, Tamaki favors characters with huge, expressive eyes and mouths; Michiko might be a distant relation of Sumire Iwaya, the long-suffering salarywoman of Tramps Like Us.

A few folks may grumble about production values—e.g. the unattractive font used for voice-overs and interior monologues—but most readers will be pleased to see the care with which Walkin’ Butterfly was packaged, from the high-quality paper stock to the appealing omake. My only bone to pick with the publisher is the inconsistent approach to pop-culture references; some are preserved from the original, sans explanation, while others are replaced with American equivalents. I would have preferred celebrity names, song lyrics, and movie titles to be left intact with footnotes or a glossary to explain more obscure references. That said, Walkin’ Butterfly has the hallmarks of a great guilty pleasure, provided our uncouth heroine doesn’t lose too many edges in the process.

Volume one of Walkin’ Butterfly is now available.