12 Episode Anime series, based off the Manga by Takako Shimura. Aired in English by Crunchyroll
Growing up can be a trying time for a teenager, trying to find ones place in a world which is rapidly changing around them. Not only that they themselves are changing as well. It can be a tough time, a funny time, and a time of many emotions.
Wandering Son is an anime the focuses on a group of teenagers going through these emotions. Shuichi Nitori, Yoshino Takatsuki, and Saori Chiba are entering first year of junior high. All three are coming off a rough break up of their friendship when Shuichi confessed his love for Yoshino but Yoshino said she wasn’t ready for it. Saori is also interested in Shuichi, but she was rejected by him. And Shuichi and Yoshino are also into cross dressing, with Shuichi wanting to be a girl and Yoshino a boy.
What follows is a series that captures the tensions and joys of not only growing up as a teenager, but also dealing with the issues of gender identity and how one looks at oneself. Instead of playing itself off as a slapstick comedy, like other anime or manga do with cross dressing, it instead plays it seriously. But it also doesn’t fall into an overly dramatic story like a live action series would. There are many great moments of warm humour in the series, as well as moments of caring and romance.
This really is one of the better coming of age stories in anime, the pacing and music fit the story perfectly. It helps that the music is understated but fitting perfectly to the series. AIC Classics uses a washed, almost water colour look to the animation and it makes the series one of the better looking ones of the season. And the voice acting fits every character in the show perfectly.
Which is good because the story deserves quality animation. It’s slow pace, balanced look at the positives and negatives of growing up is refreshing compared to other school anime. The fact it’s perhaps the best series I’ve seen dealing with cross dressing as a real issue makes it even better. This is the kind of unique story that anime can tell and can tell better than live action. It shows that TV anime can indeed be art when done right and I wish more shows would be like it.
Wandering son demands and deserves to be watched, even if you don’t like school anime. It is hands down one of the best, if not the best, anime of the year.
(The manga is being released by Fantagraphics in English, and should be checked out as well…)
Saturday 30 April 2011
Wednesday 27 April 2011
Hockey Thoughts of the Week - Round 1 Stanley Cup edition
That's large exhale you heard from the Pacific Northwest? That was Vancouver Canucks fans breathing a bit easier. After almost blowing a 3-0 lead, and letting a 1-0 lead slip away in the final 2 minutes of game 7 the Canucks managed to put the hawks away in OT to slay at least one playoff demon. Now the Predators are next, a team that scares me as it has all of the keys a good playoff teams needs to beat a higher seed. Good goaltending and an excellent defense corps. It should be another nail biting series which will drive me up the wall but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Some other quick thoughts on the first round:
4 game sevens means for some great hockey. The First round always ends up being the best round because of this and this year is no different. At the same time we had no real upsets in the first round either, as both conferences had the top 3 seeds advance. In fact both had the 1,2,3 and 5 seeds go on (I rarely consider the 5 seed beating the 4th an upset).
This probably means the next round will be upset city as the Stanley Cup playoffs rarely go 100% according to script.
Anyway, my quick predictions for Round 2:
Vancouver over Nashville in 6
Detroit over San Jose in 7
Washington over Tampa in 5
Boston over Philly in 6
Some other quick thoughts on the first round:
4 game sevens means for some great hockey. The First round always ends up being the best round because of this and this year is no different. At the same time we had no real upsets in the first round either, as both conferences had the top 3 seeds advance. In fact both had the 1,2,3 and 5 seeds go on (I rarely consider the 5 seed beating the 4th an upset).
This probably means the next round will be upset city as the Stanley Cup playoffs rarely go 100% according to script.
Anyway, my quick predictions for Round 2:
Vancouver over Nashville in 6
Detroit over San Jose in 7
Washington over Tampa in 5
Boston over Philly in 6
Cross Game Volume 1
By Mitsuru Adachi
First Published by Shogakukan in 2005 - First Published in English by Viz in 2010
Cross Game Volume 1 by Mitsuru Adachi is an odd beast in today’s shonen manga world in English. It is not an action packed series nor a slap stick romantic comedy. Instead it is a slow paced sports drama about Baseball and 2 young kids that play it. It’s also a slice of life story on growing up, dealing with pain and at times a comedy that pokes fun at itself and the genre. It is all of that and so much more making it one of the better manga titles out there.
Perhaps it’s shown best in the series excellent opening chapters, taken at a slow pace to show the mood and tone of the series. Here we are introduced to Ko, Wakaba and Aoba; childhood friends working with each other. Adachi sets the tone here greatly of how Ko and Wakaba are friends and have a bit of unrealized crush on each other. Over the course of these early chapters baseball is introduced and Ko reluctantly plays in his first game (besides the time he spent in a batting cage). Also shown is how into the game Aoba is, and how much she practices at it.
These set up chapters do a good job of setting up the typical tropes of the shonen sports genre, how the main character first gets into the sport of baseball. It shows the potential he has at it and it also sets up the future relationships he will have outside of baseball. And while this may seem familiar if you’ve read a lot of sports manga (which there is not a lot of English) the pacing and story telling that make Cross Game so good. Everything feels so natural in the opening chapters that you can’t just help enjoy these characters and their lives.
And it’s because of that that the end of the first arc packs such a huge punch. Not to spoil events but I’ve not seen a better handling of the events in manga. Everything feels like it’s something a fifth grader like Ko would do when faced with the situation. It’s heart breaking and really hits home the drama in the title.
After that we get a time skip to High School and the baseball aspect really picks up, with a bit more comedy put in. So more drama between Aoba, Ko, and the rest of his future team. And the baseball which is done both at times as focus of the action and to compliment the rest of the story. It’s all done in a top notch way that keeps you turning the pages and feels natural.
Viz wisely decided to publish this in omnibus form, and it reads the better for it. The longer length shows just how good Adachi is at his work. He deftly switches from sports drama, to human drama, to comedy, and to coming of age during the course of this volume. And he does it all with a gentle touch rarely seen in manga of any genre; shonen or other wise. This is a unique work that will engross you from the start to the finish and make you want to read more. And wish their was more manga like this out in English right now. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to like this, you just have to be a fan of good manga.
First Published by Shogakukan in 2005 - First Published in English by Viz in 2010
Cross Game Volume 1 by Mitsuru Adachi is an odd beast in today’s shonen manga world in English. It is not an action packed series nor a slap stick romantic comedy. Instead it is a slow paced sports drama about Baseball and 2 young kids that play it. It’s also a slice of life story on growing up, dealing with pain and at times a comedy that pokes fun at itself and the genre. It is all of that and so much more making it one of the better manga titles out there.
Perhaps it’s shown best in the series excellent opening chapters, taken at a slow pace to show the mood and tone of the series. Here we are introduced to Ko, Wakaba and Aoba; childhood friends working with each other. Adachi sets the tone here greatly of how Ko and Wakaba are friends and have a bit of unrealized crush on each other. Over the course of these early chapters baseball is introduced and Ko reluctantly plays in his first game (besides the time he spent in a batting cage). Also shown is how into the game Aoba is, and how much she practices at it.
These set up chapters do a good job of setting up the typical tropes of the shonen sports genre, how the main character first gets into the sport of baseball. It shows the potential he has at it and it also sets up the future relationships he will have outside of baseball. And while this may seem familiar if you’ve read a lot of sports manga (which there is not a lot of English) the pacing and story telling that make Cross Game so good. Everything feels so natural in the opening chapters that you can’t just help enjoy these characters and their lives.
And it’s because of that that the end of the first arc packs such a huge punch. Not to spoil events but I’ve not seen a better handling of the events in manga. Everything feels like it’s something a fifth grader like Ko would do when faced with the situation. It’s heart breaking and really hits home the drama in the title.
After that we get a time skip to High School and the baseball aspect really picks up, with a bit more comedy put in. So more drama between Aoba, Ko, and the rest of his future team. And the baseball which is done both at times as focus of the action and to compliment the rest of the story. It’s all done in a top notch way that keeps you turning the pages and feels natural.
Viz wisely decided to publish this in omnibus form, and it reads the better for it. The longer length shows just how good Adachi is at his work. He deftly switches from sports drama, to human drama, to comedy, and to coming of age during the course of this volume. And he does it all with a gentle touch rarely seen in manga of any genre; shonen or other wise. This is a unique work that will engross you from the start to the finish and make you want to read more. And wish their was more manga like this out in English right now. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to like this, you just have to be a fan of good manga.
Monday 25 April 2011
Those Selfish Aliens - Manga Moveable Feast post
By Rumiko Takahashi, First Published by Shogakukan in 1978. First Published in English by Viz in Manga Vision Vol 1 No. 7 in 1995
Those Selfish aliens is a short, 34 page work which was Rumiko Takahashi’s first solo work published in Japan. It’s an interesting read in both of how it provides the rough lay out of the silly, absurd comedy she would use to rocket into super stardom with Urusei Yatsura and to see the first work of a major manga writer in English.
The plot is a simple one, about a young man named Kei delivering newspapers. He ends up getting kidnapped by aliens and has a bomb implanted in him to threaten humanity. Only than the aliens end up getting kidnapped by Fishmen and the newspaper boy ends up having another bomb placed in him so they can threaten the surface world . After Kei and the aliens escape they crash land back on the surface and people end up mistaking him for an alien. So of course the Human government decides to take him in and put a bomb in him so he can blow up the alien spaceship. Naturally all sides find out they are using him as a weapon, laugh it off only to find out that if he dies the chain reaction will blow up the universe.
And of course the one thing the main hero is focused on is delivering newspapers. Even at the end.
It’s clear from the get go that Takahashi had a clear grasp on absurd comedy. Both in using silly events to portray the humor and using characters to reinforce the joke. The build up of sides kidnapping our hero is both wonderfully funny and a good poke at the silly plot devices of the giant monster movies Japan was making at the time. Events move quickly and we are always quick to another joke or an absurd visual panel.
And the characters again set up to serve the comedy well. Our main lead is wonderfully clueless, like all good comedy saps. He knows that something is going on but instead cares more about his job of delivering papers than the fact that aliens and fish men are around him. We even have our first Takahashi female lead getting a cold shoulder, as Takahashi sets up a potential romantic payoff only to have Kei run off saying he has to deliver his papers. It’s funny here in it’s proto form, and you can see why she used it to great effect later on in her long running series.
It’s wonderfully rough around the edges, much like the first few issues of UY is. But it’s down right funny in places and shows clearly that Rumiko was going to be a super star. It may be hard to track down due to Manga Vizion not selling well, but it is well worth a read to see the first work of a manga super star.
Those Selfish aliens is a short, 34 page work which was Rumiko Takahashi’s first solo work published in Japan. It’s an interesting read in both of how it provides the rough lay out of the silly, absurd comedy she would use to rocket into super stardom with Urusei Yatsura and to see the first work of a major manga writer in English.
The plot is a simple one, about a young man named Kei delivering newspapers. He ends up getting kidnapped by aliens and has a bomb implanted in him to threaten humanity. Only than the aliens end up getting kidnapped by Fishmen and the newspaper boy ends up having another bomb placed in him so they can threaten the surface world . After Kei and the aliens escape they crash land back on the surface and people end up mistaking him for an alien. So of course the Human government decides to take him in and put a bomb in him so he can blow up the alien spaceship. Naturally all sides find out they are using him as a weapon, laugh it off only to find out that if he dies the chain reaction will blow up the universe.
And of course the one thing the main hero is focused on is delivering newspapers. Even at the end.
It’s clear from the get go that Takahashi had a clear grasp on absurd comedy. Both in using silly events to portray the humor and using characters to reinforce the joke. The build up of sides kidnapping our hero is both wonderfully funny and a good poke at the silly plot devices of the giant monster movies Japan was making at the time. Events move quickly and we are always quick to another joke or an absurd visual panel.
And the characters again set up to serve the comedy well. Our main lead is wonderfully clueless, like all good comedy saps. He knows that something is going on but instead cares more about his job of delivering papers than the fact that aliens and fish men are around him. We even have our first Takahashi female lead getting a cold shoulder, as Takahashi sets up a potential romantic payoff only to have Kei run off saying he has to deliver his papers. It’s funny here in it’s proto form, and you can see why she used it to great effect later on in her long running series.
It’s wonderfully rough around the edges, much like the first few issues of UY is. But it’s down right funny in places and shows clearly that Rumiko was going to be a super star. It may be hard to track down due to Manga Vizion not selling well, but it is well worth a read to see the first work of a manga super star.
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