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Metropolis (Osamu Tezuka) manga review

Another Osamu Tezuka manga! From 1949 too! After Dororo, Metropolis is probably the least bad Tezuka work I’ve read, but that doesn’t mean it’s all that good either.

The blurb:

From Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy, comes Metropolis, the legendary 1949 graphic novel that inspired the animated fame that floored audiences and critics alike. In a not-so-far-off future a beautiful, artifically created girl — unaware of her non-human background — wanders alone in a world populated by humans and by the slave-driven robots who serve them as she searches for the non-existent parents she believes must exist. Tezuka’s key theme of the nature of humanity in a technological society is framed in bold relief, as well as his wry allegorical observations of the Cold War that was escalating when he created Metropolis. A brilliant work of wit and wisdom — and guest-starring some friends you may recognize from Astro Boy! — Metropolis is one of graphic fiction’s most enduring tales.

As with Lost World, he also claims to be unfamiliar with the 1927 movie of the same name that the manga is suspiciously similar to. But since Tezuka is the “god of manga” or whatever they like to call him, no one bothers to dispute his claim. Personally I think he copies both originals, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s just evaluate the manga as we have it.

TBH I don’t remember any observations on the Cold War, except for the part where a scientist speculates that humans become too advanced they might end up destroying themselves. I wouldn’t have realized it was linked to the Cold War if the back cover hadn’t pointed it out. The part about Michi “wandering alone” is not quite accurate either, since for most of the manga s/he is in the constant company of friends.

That’s the other thing – strictly speaking Michi is neither male or female. There’s a switch in her throat that changes her gender when pressed, but s/he spends most of the game in male form, so I’m going to call him ‘he’ from now on. Michi is an artificial created by an evil Red Party …. ohhh, Red Party. Communism! D’oh, now I get it. Is Michi supposed to represent nuclear power gone out of control? Interesting.

Anyway, this fact is hidden from Michi for most of the story. He seems to be a mild-mannered sort of kid, but when he finds out the truth he goes totally berserk and destroys much of the metropolis before meeting his end. This turn of events is rather sudden because Michi had been such a happy, friendly child before, but I suppose the signs were there early on. Besides he wasn’t really human and he’s immature to boot, so it’s not quite fair to expect him to react with human rationality. “When science is misapplied, innocents suffer,” is what Tezuka seems to want to say.

My overall opinion of Metropolis is “Unrealized potential.” There were a lot of things that didn’t get the attention they deserved. Duke Red and the motivations of the Red Party, for example. The reason for Duke Red’s obsession with the statue that Michi looks like (no, it’s not his kid like Wikipedia claims). The friendship between Ken and Michi needed a little more exploration. The character of Emmy kind of came out of nowhere and went nowhere. Just because Duke Red is dead doesn’t necessarily mean the Red Party is done for. The ending is cheesy and rather abrupt. Poor Michi killed a lot of people but it’s okay ‘cos he was just misunderstood, aww. NOT.

In the author’s notes at the end of Metropolis, he mentions that he had to cut out a lot of things at the end of the manga, which goes a lot way to explain how sudden the events of the last third of the book are. There’s a lot of time wasted fighting giant Micky Mouse lookalike rats and running from KKK-dressed henchmen that would have been better served focusing on Michi, IMO. So the explanation that Tezuka meant to devote more attention to more important matters but never got around to it is a plausible one. I just think he cut the wrong things out of the manga when he had to, but I’ll buy his excuse that he was pressed for time.

So yeah Metropolis an interesting little story that doesn’t really go anywhere. At least it doesn’t contain any offensive content like Ayako, plus it’s a complete story in one little volume. It’s worth a read if you like standalone graphic novels or just want a light introduction to older scifi manga. I’m still on the hunt for what makes Osamu Tezuka so special, though.

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 manga review

Well, things are certainly moving quickly. By the end of Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 the brothers have already become the main battery of the Hirataka high school baseball team and Koshien preliminaries have already began. The team went it expecting an easy win against their first opponent, but Ichiya quickly falls prey to the opponent’s mind games. By the time he snaps out of it Hirataka is already down 3-0. Is the team doomed to fail in its very first official game?

That would be an interesting twist, certainly. I rather doubt it though, simply because the bulk of volume 2 was spent introducing the rival team and the rival batter, Shinoi of Chouzan High. Hirataka is very conveniently destined to meet Chouzan right before the preliminary finals, so it’s unlikely that they’ll be knocked out before then. Plus most of the Hirataka team is made up of third years so this is their last tournament. If the team fails in the first match then author Shinji Tonaka will have to start over with an almost entirely new cast from volume 4. I have yet to meet a mangaka with that kind of guts, but who knows?

Apart from the introduction of Shinoi and the start of the tournament, nothing too exciting happened in volume 2. We were introduced to their eccentric team coach, one of those types who only gives cryptic advice instead of coming out to say what he means. The Touma brothers have also started working on a new pitch, since all Ichiya can throw right now are fastballs and sliders. Having Shinoi hit his pitch so easily has lit a fire under both brothers, though the results have yet to be felt.

TBH I wish the author would have delayed the start of the Koshien prelims by at least another volume. I haven’t got a good feel for the characters and their personalities just yet, and most of the Hirataka team is still just so much ink on paper. I don’t even know who bats when (Yoshi 3rd, Takaoka 4th, that’s it) or who defends what position. A little time spent developing the team by maybe focusing on training or the Touma brothers’ home life would have come in handy.

I can’t say I’m impressed by the baseball action I’ve seen so far either. It’s very boringly depicted. All pitchers adopt the same pose and then somehow the ball hits the bat/mitt and goes flying somewhere and it’s like whatever. Rather hard to follow and really hard to get into because you don’t know the main characters well enough to root for them to hit/strike someone out.

But it’s only volume 2 of Oto-Ore (the official abbreviation and much easier on the tongue than Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de!) so let’s keep reading and see how things develop, shall we?

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 1 manga review

Mais oui, of course I’m still reading Japanese baseball manga. Ikkyuu-san was a bit of a failure, so I’m reading something more recent now. Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! by Shinji Tonaka started running 2008 and up to 18 volumes and counting. I usually avoid ongoing series because then you get to the end and you’re like WHERE’S VOLUME 19?!! but every rule is meant to be broken once in a while.

The main characters are Ichiya Touma and his younger brother Yoshi. They were a feared pitcher-catcher combo in middle school, but their parents’ divorce forced them to split up. Two years later Ichiya returns from Mongolia to try and reform the Touma battery only to find out his brother Yoshi has turned into a fierce delinquent who absolutely hates baseball! Whatever happened to Yoshi? Will they ever play together again?

Uh, the series has 18 volumes so it’s safe to say the answer is “Yes.” I’ll avoid spoiling what happened to turn Yoshi bad, but by the end of volume 1 he’s slowly (very slowly) rediscovering his love for baseball and starting to (slightly) open up to his team mates.

Not much happens in the first volume since it’s mainly an introduction to the team as well as a chance to get the obligatory “Main character’s team takes on the strongest team in the prefecture” match out of the way. Almost all baseball manga series have at least one such battle, usually in the first 5 volumes or so. I won’t tell you the outcome of this one either. I can’t spoil everything all the time.

My impressions on Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! after one volume? I’m not exactly raring to read the rest, but it’s a definite diamond in the rough. The chief attraction is the cheerful, silly, irrepressible personality of Ichiya, who regularly takes a licking from his brother Yoshi and comes back for more. His love for baseball and desire to keep pitching is also rather infectious. I hope they don’t turn him into the serious, angsty type before too long. There are too many such pitchers in baseball manga.

Apart from Ichiya, the other characters didn’t make much of an impression. To be honest I couldn’t even tell most of them apart, they all looked so similar. Most sports manga at least make an effort to give the main characters unique designs, but Ichiya and Yoshi look just like everyone else. I usually have to read their lines to try and figure out who said what. By the end of vol 1 I think I can recognize the Touma siblings on sight. The team captain has dark skin so I can tell him apart too. Everyone else is just so much ink on paper.

I don’t think too much of the baseball action so far. It hasn’t really been about the baseball anyway. More focus is on getting Yoshi to be the catcher so Ichiya can use his full strength pitching. Yoshi isn’t a particularly good catcher and Ichiya isn’t that good a pitcher, but both of them have been out of practice for 2 years so we can look forward to better things from them in later volumes.

I’ll be reading this slowly on and off and giving my thoughts here and there from time to time. Will I make it all the way to volume 18 or will Shinji Tonaka ruin the series long before that? Stay tuned to find out!

Dungeon de Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteru darou ka anime review (ending spoilers)

All right, I’m sure we can all agree that Dungeon de Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteru darou ka (Is it Wrong to Try to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon?) is a ridiculously long title that no anime reviewer should be expected to type out more than once in her lifetime, so I’m going to abbreviate it as Danmachi for the rest of this review. Any objections? I thought not.

On to business. Danmachi is set in a fantasy RPG world where everyone lives in a town with a massive dungeon in it and spend most of their time dungeon-crawling or taking part in related activities. If you’ve watched Tower of Druaga (highly recommended) it’s pretty much the same thing except instead of going up the characters are always heading down. And unlike in Druaga no one knows exactly what’s at the bottom or what they’re heading there for. They’re just exploring the dungeon because it’s there. Typical human nature.

Bell and Hestia. I don't see the chemistry at all. — Bell and Hestia. I don’t see the chemistry at all.

Into this show comes an ordinary seeming boy named Bell Cranel, who forms a contract with a busty loli goddess called Hestia. She gets to form her own clan and he gets the power and protection of a goddess, win-win. Except super-win for him, because somehow he manages to get an EXPx2 passive and some other passive haxes that make him a super-duper rookie in no time at all… which robs the series of all fun pretty quickly.

I watched most of the show pretty faithfully but by episode 13 I’d had enough. “Yeah, yeah, Bell’s just going to kill the boss and save the day again.” Skip to the last few minutes of the episode and yup, just as I expected. Oh, but it’s worse than that. It turns out that the reason why Bell is so super-special and all the gods are interested in him isn’t because he was lucky enough to get that Double EXP passive. Nope, luck had nothing to do with it. He’s actually the grandson of Zeus, king of the gods. Waaaooow. Color me surprised. And a little bit angry.

I really hate it when the main character starts out prattling about “working hard” and “determination” and “wanting to get stronger” and then it turns out the secret was in their genes all along. If you’re not lucky enough to be born to the right parents or into the right family from the start then you might as well not bother, is the message of shows like that. Dragonball (love that show but maaaan…), Naruto, Bleach where we thought Ichigo was some random human then it turned out his parents were reapers, now Danmachi as well. Like, I don’t mind at all if the character is a super-elite because of their families. No, really. But I like to be told that upfront instead of being fed a load of dung about hard work and determination blahdiblah when in the end it’s who you know that matters.

I was going sour on Danmachi before that revelation came up though. I’m not sure why. I like JRPGs quite a bit, so I like animes set in game-like worlds, but this show just didn’t do it for me. It was all over the place. Maybe they spent too much time on the Lily part early on so the rest felt rushed. The last few episodes were just one random boss fight after another after another. Oh Bell-sama is so sugoi! Bell-sama! Bell this, Bell that. *sigh*

And then all these characters just showed up and took center stage in the last few eps like this Hermes guy and his girl and Welf who should have gotten some more development but was just kinda there, and some other familias and then some random baddies who were eventually forced to recognize the wonderfulness of Bell-sama and it was all just one huge mess. Anyway Bell saves the day and everyone thinks he’s sooo wonderful, the end. At least I’ve saved myself the effort of watching Danmachi Season 2 if they ever have the nerve to release it.

That said, it’s not a entirely terrible series. I wouldn’t have made it all the way to the end if it was. I liked the setting and the premise, as I mentioned before. I like that people have stats and level up and go around shopping for armor and buy better weapons, all the things you would expect from an RPG series. In the beginning I was also interested in seeing how the relationship between Aiz and Bell would develop, but now I know he’s the grandson of a god, the Bell x Hestia ending is all but confirmed now, so that’s that.

The fight with the minotaur was a good one too, since at that point I still thought it was possible for Bell to lose at anything. He used a bit of strategy and dexterity as well, culminating in seizing the beast’s weapon and using it against him. The Firebolt in the wound plan was a good one too. Too bad the other battles in the show didn’t live up to that. Just people hopping up and down and flying left and right, slash, slash, magic spell, I can’t even see what they’re trying to do, oh the monster is dead. Too many battles packed in the last quarter too. Quality over quantity please.

So there are some good things about Dungeon de Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteru ni kimatteru darou, just not enough to overlook the endless fawning over ~~Marty Stu~~ Bell Cranel the ~~hardworking~~ born with a silver spoon in his mouth rookie and his very annoying “goddess” Hestia whose sole raison d’etre is to stick her boobs in the viewer’s faces. Watch if you like faux-humble overpowered protagonists, game world settings or loud, busty lolis. Give it a pass otherwise.

Dropped Shokugeki no Soma and ISUCA after 5 minutes

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)

I am far behind in my anime-watching and I don’t want to fall behind even further, so I like to at least try the first episode of each anime in each season so I know what to come back to later and what to drop. The season before the last was a bit of a wash, since I only found Saekano worth pursuing (even though I didn’t actually pursue it and it’s still on my “to watch” list). The last season I didn’t try that many shows, and of those I tried only Dungeon de Deai wo Motomeru showed much promise, and even that was nothing special.

This weekend I started grabbing episodes of both this and last season, and I’ve come up with some promising series to try a little more of later. I came up with others that I wasn’t too hot on, but might check out another episode of in the near future. And then there were the disappointments, Shokugeki no Soma and ISUCA.

Shokugeki no Soma – I like hot-blooded shounen comedy series as much as the next person, so I was rather looking forward to this one. First the scene where the girl had a “foodgasm” or whatever they call it after eating the fried rice was like Umm… seriously? =_= Then after that there’s a scene that shows her being sexually violated by peanut butter-covered squid tentacles, I was like DELETE! DELETE! DELETE! Disgusting and unfunny. I don’t watch anime to have my mind and eyeballs polluted.

ISUCA – Dropped even faster than Shokugeki no Soma. If you’ve watched it, you probably know why. The first 5 seconds show a naked woman latching on to a young man on the street. Then I dunno, some ribs come out of her and she turns into a monster or something bizarre like that DELETE! DELETE! The nudity is bad enough, but I really hate horror series. Really, really. If I’d bothered to read the description I probably wouldn’t have bothered to try it in the first place.

So those two shows are definitely out of the running. I’ll watch a second episode of the shows that seemed interesting and then line up those I want to watch later on. Obviously I’m going to wait till they’re complete because I hate following shows on a weekly basis, but at least I’ll have some good things to look forward to in the near future.