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My thoughts on: Rurouni Kenshin

Rurouni Kenshin wasn’t the first manga I ever read, but it was the first one I ever read online. That was back when Viz had only just gotten started and hadn’t gotten round to licensing most of the juggernauts it later got. I caught a few episodes of the Samurai X anime on TV one day, got hooked, went hunting and got hooked like nothing else before.

What I liked about it: The cast. Most of it, anyway. The music – I loved the ending themes so much I became a fan of The Yellow Monkey and T.M. Revolution almost instantly. As a matter of fact I physically own almost all the albums The Yellow Monkey ever released, and I have the pics to prove it. I think I liked the story, but I don’t remember what it was about any more. The tragedy early on where the minister was assassinated and Aoshi’s troops were massacred really moved me at the time, being used as I was to happy-go-lucky series like Ranma 1/2 (more on that one day). At the same time it wasn’t a series about killing for killing’s sake, and I was just as satisfied when the series became less and less bloody with the passing of time.

What I wasn’t so crazy about: Kaoru. There’s a part later in the manga where she supposedly dies, only not really. I’m probably the only RK fan in existence who cheered out loud when that happened, but I really, really didn’t like Kaoru. And not in a fangirl “gyaaa, get offa my man!” kind of way because I wasn’t that crazy about Kenshin either. He’s a cool guy, but I was more a fan of the supporting cast like Saito and Sano. The final Enishi arc wasn’t anywhere near as good at the Kyoto arc, but it wasn’t terrible either. The series would have been too short if it was just Kyoto so for lack of a better ending arc the Enishi arc had to do.

Series quality in general: The action was slightly hard to follow at first, but it got better pretty quickly. I bought the Vizbig editions later and thought the translations were a little too heavy on the Japanese terms. The story wasn’t too memorable in the long term but the cast definitely was. The manga is a little better than the anime, IMO, but both are okay. Is it worth reading? Well it’s one of the bestselling mangas of all time, so I think they’re on to something there. In other words, hell yeah! Especially if you like action manga. If you’ve somehow managed to get by without watching it so far, get on it now!

Hayao Miyazaki and the Marnie Poster – does the old man have a point?

The news made the rounds last week that Hayao Miyazaki had issues, to put it mildly, with the promotional poster for Studio Ghibli’s latest offering: When Marnie Was There.

I’m still trying to wrap my head about what exactly his problem is with this particular movie poster. According to reports, Miyazaki says using pictures of a girl to get attention is “just plain outdated and cheesy.” Uhh, what? Just in case I was reading him wrong, I went back and looked at older Ghibli posters: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, Nausicaa, Arrietty. They all feature the main girl quite prominently on their covers. Perhaps not in as enticing a pose as Marnie, but prominently nevertheless.

So what exactly is Miyazaki protesting against? The very-slightly suggestive pose Marnie is striking? It’s a typical “cute girl being friendly” anime pose, but hardly as ‘come hither’ as some anime can get. Perhaps he wanted to see her standing straight up and stock still like girls in his other covers, but that doesn’t means a 15-degree tilt in posture is enough to ruin the whole idea.

Or is the problem her hair and eyes? Blonde and blue-haired foreigners in anime are often – not always, but often enough – portrayed as wild, lascivious, uncontrolled sexpots. Thus by virtue of her nationality, Marnie is already in the over-sexualized category, at least in Miyazaki’s eyes, meaning that any slight friendliness on her part can be mistaken as an overt come on. This is especially so because one of the earlier posters had “I love you” written on it. This isn’t his official opinion, by the way. I’m just trying to get into Miyazaki’s head on this issue.

Really, though, I think the truth behind the issue: money. Controversy sells. This is the first Ghibli movie to be released since Miyazaki retired (again), and maybe the studio felt they needed a little extra oomph behind their marketing. What better way to ride on the maestro’s coattails while ostensibly breaking with the past than by releasing critical – but not too critical – comments from the guru himself? I won’t go so far as to say they made up the comments for publicity’s sake, but they certainly promoted them enthusiastically enough.

When Marnie Was Here comes out in Japan in July 2014 and in the rest of the world not too long afterwards. I’m quite looking forward to it, though I still have to watch Arrietty and The Wind Rises first.

Taisho Yakyuu Musume anime review

Moderately interesting baseball slice of life anime set in 1920s Japan. Rich girl’s fiancee says something mean and she forms a baseball team to get back at him. The girls seem to be having fun, at least, and there are all the different kinds of wacky misunderstandings and romantic mix-ups that you would expect from your everyday high school anime.

I didn’t find Taisho Yakyuu Musume interesting enough to watch till the end, so I stopped around episode 10 and just skimmed through the rest. I’m happy that Koume’s relationship with Saburo seems to be going along well. Apart from that, I didn’t care to watch any more. Nice characters, but nothing you haven’t seen before from any moe slice-of-life show. The baseball action isn’t very good because for most of the show the girls really suck at it. The pitcher only learns to throw a breaking ball around episode 8 of 12, etc. etc. Worth a watch if you like high school girls, moe, or slice of life.

Spoilers: Most baseball anime series end with the protagonist’s team losing. This ratio goes up to 100% when it’s a show about girls facing off against boys. Heaven forbid that XX chromosomes should ever triumph over XY. Keep that in mind when you watch this.

Ookiku Furikabutte animation error

From Season 2 (Natsu no taikai-hen) episode 1. When Tajima, Mihashi, Hamada and Izumi are having lunch in the classroom, we first see Tajima holding his chopsticks in his left hand.

This is, of course, because he injured his right fingers in the last inning of the Tosei game. A few seconds later he gets up to talk to Shinooka, then gets back to eating. But this time his chopsticks have shifted to his right hand:

Either someone on the animation team wasn’t paying attention to the story continuity or the mistake come from the manga. …It wouldn’t take long to check… Nope, it’s not from the manga. Just an animator that didn’t pay attention to story continuity, happens all the time.

Ookiku Furikabutte Volume 19 cover + anime review

I knew I’d seen that pose somewhere before! Not that it’s a secret that sports mangaka use real life athlete photos as source material, but I just wanted to post this somewhere ‘cos I’m feeling rather clever. Ookiku Furikabutte Vol.19 comes out in Japan on June 22nd, but I’m not buying it because it’s just more Musashino Daiichi and Haruna, and that’s not who I read Ookiku Furikabutte for.

As for the series itself, it’s one of my favorite manga. Currently my favorite sports series now that Hajime no Ippo has been stagnating for goodness knows how long. I haven’t mentioned it here before because first I wouldn’t know where to start and secondly I only got into it recently. I watched Big Windup twice on Funimation’s youtube channel and liked it so much that I bought the S.A.V.E. DVD set as well.

What I like about it is, of course, the characters. Every sports manga lives and dies by its characters, which is only obvious because if it’s the sports the fans want to see, that’s what ESPN is there for. Ookiku Furikabutte has Mihashi Ren, a wimpy, crybaby pitcher consumed with guilt (as well he should be) for making his middle school team lose for 3 years in a row because he wouldn’t let anyone else pitch.

In high school he meets up with “genius” catcher Abe who latches on to Mihashi’s potential and easy controllability and together with 8 others member of the Nishiura High School baseball team and their big-boobed coach, they aim to make it to Koshien.

Normally I dislike whiny types like Mihashi and bossy types like Abe, but something about these guys makes them not just easy to bear but actually easy to like. It helps that the author Higuchi doesn’t try too hard to make them sympathetic. Yes, Mihashi had a hard time at Mihoshi, but it was 90% his own fault. Yes, Abe went through a lot with Haruna, but he shouldn’t take it out on other pitchers. They’re not perfect – and they’re not even that great as a battery – but that makes it all the easier to root for them.

So far there are 2 anime seasons and 90 chapters of the manga out. I’m suffering from the usual “Caught up to the manga and now waiting is a pain” disease. I dropped Hayate no Gotoku because waiting for releases got too tedious and the manga wasn’t going anywhere (gimme back my A-tan!), and it might only be a matter of time before I drop Oofuri too. For now, though, I’m just having fun.