Heat Guy J manga review

I usually stay away from manga adapted from anime, figuring (usually rightly) that they’re cheap, poorly-made cash grab attempts. But I’d heard a lot about Heat Guy J, it was only 1 volume long and the summary seemed decent enough, so I figured, how bad can it be? And surprisingly enough it wasn’t bad at all. I wouldn’t have minded a second or third volume, in fact. The only, massive flaw was the excessive and unnecessary fanservice (when is fanservice ever necessary?) which wasted space that could have been better spent on character or story development.

From the back of the bookDaisuke Aurora works with the special division of peacekeepers in the city of Jewde, one of the largest cities on the planet. He and his android partner, Heat Guy J, team up to make sure that anything illegal stays off the streets and out of circulation.

However, their presence doesn’t sit too well with the local mob leader–a ruthless, unbalanced, well-armed son of the late Don, who is out to prove that he is not too young to take over the family business. In the city that never sleeps, will Daisuke and Heat Guy J end up sleeping with the fishes? The anime favorite as seen on MTV is now an action-packed manga!

No need to thank me.
No need to thank me.

Well… it is pretty action-packed, I guess. I rather liked the contrast between the girly character designs (apparently done by the character designer of Escaflowne) and the manly deeds of derring-do that take place within. The blurb is lying a bit, though: the son of the late Don doesn’t show up much and doesn’t do much when he does. They probably took the summary directly from the anime instead of from the manga itself.

As you may have guessed by now, I quite enjoyed Heat Guy J. I liked the Heat Guy android himself, and his interactions with his partner Daisuke are more father-and-son than typical cop-movie stuff, though there are the usual rescues of each other you normally expect from the genre. Each chapter contains a largely self-contained story that makes sense even without watching the anime. And while the setting and the incidents can be quite serious there’s also plenty of humor to lighten the deal, usually at the expense of team auditor Kyoko. Humor, action, nice art, buddy-buddy feel, it’s all good.

The only fly in the ointment, as I said, was the fanservice. Women in skimpy clothes come out of nowhere and prance around usually for no good purpose except to titillate easily-pleased readers. It’s one thing if it’s an ecchi manga to begin with. Or if a mangaka realizes his ratings are sliding and includes something to pull them back. But in my opinion Heat Guy J didn’t need to resort to that sort of cheap thrill, so it a bit of a shame that they included it.

Now then, to pick up the Heat Guy J anime or not? Sadly enough the back of the volume includes a ton of spoilers for future events and characters. That and Geneon, who licensed the anime, went belly-up several years ago. If I could find it cheap somewhere or get the chance to stream it legally I guess I would, but otherwise I won’t go out of my way to pursue the issue. It was good, but not that good.

Remember manhua review

Remember how ‘Red Colored Elegy‘ was supposed to be a highly-influential work? When I reviewed it, I noted that I could see how people would be inspired by it, but the keyword was ‘inspired’ – I never expected someone to flat out copy the whole thing. Until I read Remember by Chinese artist Benjamin, that is…

The blurb goes:

What is the fine line that separates love from hate? How can a broken heart heal from a loss so deep? When is letting go of your inhibitions worth risking your life?

International artist Benjamin depicts profoundl moving portrayals of love and loss that get at the core of what it means to throw your heart into life. The artist doesn’t offer any comfort from the despair we all feel in our lives – while we know there is no answer, we are all better off for asking the question… and remembering the struggle.

Actually the real question they should be asking is “What is the fine line that separates inspiration from plagiarism?” I will give Benjamin props for being a pretty good artist (that cover just screams “Buy Me!” doesn’t it?), but when it comes to storytelling he is utterly bereft of ideas. And he is completely aware of it too, if his self-loathing author’s comments are anything to go by.

Remember_p026Remember is made up of two short stories. The title story ‘Remember’ deals with a  Struggling artist with a bad attitude, girl who loves him for no reason, he pushes her away until she does go away and then he hates himself even more than ever, the end.  I really didn’t need to summarize that, I should have just pointed to the original story, which for all its flaws does a better job at conveying the doomed relationship and almost, not quite, making the characters relateable.

Anyway, this struggling artist submits story after story to a comic publisher only to have them turned down because they’re not enough like Japanese manga. “Chinese readers don’t want originality! They want plagiarized Japanese manga!” the editor straight-up tells him. So it’s ironic – or maybe meaningful – that the story itself is a straight-up copy of Red Colored Elegy, with better art and with the sex cut out or made ambiguous to avoid censorship.

Is this how low Benjamin had to sink to get his work published in China? Maybe. But what is more likely is that he put that scene in just to cover his inability to write a Chinese manhua that would be accepted by editors. “See it’s not me, it’s the editors, they forced me to plagiarize! Left to my own devices I could totally write a great story!” If that’s the case, why is the copy even worse than the original?

Besides, the Remember collection includes a second short story as well, about students in art school being bullied, but it’s crap. I read about a third of it and then just skimmed through it because it was just more self-loathing navel-gazing twaddle. He probably copied that from a Japanese manga as well, I just don’t know enough manga to spot which one.

Remember_p081In any case, by that time the nice art had lost its effect on me and all of Benjamin’s shortcomings as a writer were on display for all to see. Rambling, incoherent ‘I’m so deep and nobody understands me’ characters dot the pages like so many teenagers at an emo concert. They’re all flat one-note characters – ‘quirky girl’, ‘misunderstood artist’, ‘unreasonable editor’ – one defining characteristic carries them through the whole story. Even in a short story you should be able to flesh characters out a little more than that, especially in slice-of-life kind of stories where enjoyment depends on getting under the character’s skins.

Benjamin can draw, there’s no question about that, but unless he can learn to write as well it really doesn’t profit him very much. The fact that the manga goes for less than $2.00 on Amazon despite being out of print should tell you everything you need to know about that. Still I’m not a mean person, and I can see some budding talent there. I’d advise him to work on his writing skills if he really want to make it as a mangaka (manhuajia?). Failing that, there’s nothing wrong with being a dedicated artist and illustrator, since he does have the skills to back that up. Good luck, Mr. Plagiarizer!

Farewell Tokyopop!

I heard yesterday that Tokyopop was closing its doors for good. No word on what will happen to most of its licenses, but the majority of its cash cows were taken away by Kodansha a while ago anyway. Pretty much all they had that people cared about was Hetalia, Alice in the Country of Hearts, Future Diary and maybe Aria. None of these are series I’ve ever cared much for, anyway. The only Tokyopop manga I have in my collection is a few volumes of Sgt. Frog, which I always thought they did a smashing job with. So in that respect I’ll be a little sad to see them go.

These are the signs of the times, though. The great anime/manga boom of the early 2000s is long over, now it’s sink or swim. Viz has canceled future releases of series like Gintama and Katekyo Hitman Reborn that weren’t selling too well, and I think they’re on the right track with that. It’s time to slim down and pare away the chaff.

The surviving companies have to approach manga from a business perspective instead of a fan one: what sells? Get that, license it and sell it. If Tokyopop had done that instead of licensing hundreds of unprofitable series, wasting time developing Original English Manga that few people cared about and recently, insulting the fans with that horrible America’s Greatest Otaku series, maybe they’d have had a better chance of surviving. Maybe.

Of course, the fans might cry foul if only stuff like Naruto and Bleach gets licensed. Those people can count on Vertical to release niche titles that sell, I suppose. Or they can suck it up and realize that ‘artistic merit’ means nothing if it leads to bankruptcy. Face it, manga costs a lot to produce, license, translate, typeset, market and sell. If you go through all that trouble only to sell 200 copies of that manga, you might as well not bother at all.

Quite frankly, I don’t think the average anime/manga fan who has gotten used to watching or reading his/her favorite manga for free is going to change his/her behavior any time soon. They might say “OMG, I love series X, it should be licensed!” but when it is, they just come up with some flimsy excuse (I don’t have money, I don’t like the translation, I don’t like the cover, I don’t like the company, It’s too expensive, It’s not coming out fast enough) to ignore it and keep reading their illegal scans.

So instead of trying to get those lost fans back, it’s up to manga companies to study who DOES buy manga, what they do buy and how they make their buying decisions, and then sell manga to them. I think they’re beginning to do that.

I also think they should go after the surviving aggregate sites. They did well taking down Mangahelpers and OneManga, but they didn’t go far enough and others have sprung up to take their place, most notably MangaFox. They might not succeed in taking them all down, but they have to make a public and well-publicized effort to show the world that reading manga for free is not the way it’s supposed to go. I swear, there are fans now who think manga naturally comes in free, low-quality, online packages and that anyone who tries to charge for it is ripping them off. Even if you can’t stop them pirating, they should at least know that what they’re doing is wrong. (Plus it pisses me off to hear them thanking the aggregators like they did anything except upload scans downloaded from somewhere, but that’s another matter for another time.)

So, farewell Tokyopop. All things must come to an end someday, and yours was a long time coming.

Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~ vol. 1 manga review

Another stupid manga, I won’t waste too much time writing about this one. Kouhei is a photographer of spiritual phenomena. He runs into this loli named Hazuki in Germany and she tries to make him her slave by biting him. After some hijinks involving a cursed castle, Kouhei and Hazuki end up back in Japan together. She turns out to be a vampire, and Kouhei promises to help her find her mother, partly because he has unresolved mommy issues of his own.

If Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~ doesn’t sound too exciting from my description, that’s because it’s not. Hazuki’s too stupid to be a manipulative loli, too young to be a convincing tsundere and too bad-tempered to be a sympathetic character. As for Kouhei, the only thing he’s got going for him is that he’s invulnerable to hypnosis and stuff, but that’s because he’s DENSE, nothing else. So you’ve got a series that revolves around a relationship between two unlikeable characters…is anyone but me seeing the problem here or do you need a few more hints?

After licensing so many bad titles like this, no wonder Tokyopop is in trouble. Moving on…