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Choosing a good font for manga typesetting (Part 2) – Paid fonts

All right, welcome back! It’s been a while since I left off with Part 1, where I mentioned some things I usually look for when picking a font for typesetting manga with. I also took the chance to mention a few fonts I wouldn’t touch with a 20-foot barge pole, some of which might be okay for SFX fonts but all of which look terrible as dialog fonts.

Today we continue with some good dialog fonts – those for typesetters and comic book writers with deep pockets. Or not that deep, if you shop right. This is a good time for a post like this because Comicraft, “Purveyors of Unique Design and Fine Lettering” i.e. comic book fonts, will be holding their annual January 1st sale. All fonts on their site will cost only $20.15, as opposed to up to $129 for some of their priciest offerings.

Disclaimer: I’m a complete font amateur and self-taught typesetter and I’m writing this for fellow self-taught amateurs. So this isn’t meant to be professional advice at all. With that out of the way, which fonts do I personally like? Which ones would I use/have I used before in a manga? That’s what this post is here for. For Comicraft fonts, I’m partial to:

Wildwords – Some people steer clear of Wildwords these days because at some point in the early 2000s it seemed like every typesetter and their mother was using it. That doesn’t make it a bad font though. It looks good in nearly every kind of manga and in fact seems almost tailor-made for shounen manga. It fits into the fiddliest bubbles like a dream and looks good at nearly all sizes, so it’s a great ‘starter’ font for baby typesetters. Even its ubiquity is a good thing, because it means fans won’t get caught up looking at your pretty font, they’ll just move to the meat of the story. There’s a nice-looking lowercase version as well, though the ‘d’ looks a little squat IMO.

Joe Kubert – One of my favorites. It has a clean, open feel that makes it good for both for dense, dark manga, where it stands out in a good way, and for manga with lots of white space, where it blends right in. It does look a bit formal though, so I wouldn’t use it for anything too jokey. Also it might be a little too ‘manly’ for a very girly shoujo manga. In such cases you can either use the slightly softer and rounder Adam Kubert or…

Jim Lee – A friendly, comical looking font that works best in small doses. Too much of it or too large a size and it becomes slightly hard to follow, though still legible. I like it a lot in light-hearted manga. If it’s manga with a lot of text I’ll use something else, otherwise I like either Jim Lee or a lowercase font for the lighter stuff.

Los Vampiros – Another font you can’t really go wrong with, with the added bonus of being much less common than Wild Words. The letters may look a bit large, but they scale up and down nicely. The ‘R’ looks a little bulbous to me, but apart from that I like it.

Digital Delivery – It’s a bit too even and robotic to be used in speech bubbles, but I’ve made good use of it for narration bubbles, especially where the narrator is one of the characters in the manga so it feels like s/he’s just writing in a diary. If you use it, try not to make it too big.

Meanwhile – A font I’ve used once instead of Joe Kubert. When used at larger sizes it can bother me a bit because of the too-large Os and the squeezy look of the Es and… am I making any sense, btw? But at normal dialog font sizes like 14-18 it looks great.

Mild Mannered – ‘Meanwhile’ without all the flaws. A much better options Maybe it’s because of the name, but I think of comics when I look at it.

I wouldn’t use: Comicrazy – Only one step above Comic Sans MS. Yes, I went there. Dave Gibbons – It’s too big. Kiss and Tell – The shape of the ‘A’ and the ‘E’ and the ‘N’ and lots of other letters feel a little ‘off’. Good for people who like slightly quirky stuff, I guess, but I would find it distracting to read. Hush Hush – It’s just ugly. Yada Yada – Ugh-ly. Tim Sale – Also ugly, also dat S. etc, etc.

Apart from Comicraft the other paid font company most people know of is Blambot. They unleashed monstrosities like Anime Ace, ACME Secret Agent and Manga Temple on the world so it’s easy to curse their name, but they also have some great paid offerings as well. As a bonus these are cheaper than Comicraft’s all year round at an average of $20 each. They also have an annual 30% off sale, which is sadly over for this year. For Blambot paid fonts, I’d recommend…

Lint McCree Intl BB – Probably my favorite of the Blambot fonts, since even though the letters have bulges in all the wrong places, they’re all like that, so the whole thing works together. Looks great both big and small. The letter U sticks out a bit though, since it’s a bit square compared to the rounded nature of the other letters. It would be better if D was a little smaller too. Also the little ‘dash’ under the exclamation mark gives it a childish look that would make it harder to use in more serious manga. Good dialog font for a lighthearted shounen or seinen series.

Jack Armstrong BB – A bit thick, but would look good in most kinds of manga as long as you don’t study it too closely. If you do study it, you might be bothered like I am by that triangular-looking ‘A’ or how low the lower half of the E is, same with K, and how P looks like D while R looks like a K with a boil on its head and the bottom of the U isn’t smooth enough, and on and on and on. Best to use this one in an action manga where people don’t linger over the pages.

AntiHero BB – Another quirky, less formal font you might use in place of Jim Lee. That ‘A’ bugs me a little bit, but it still looks really nice, particularly at smaller dialogue sizes.

Comicgeek BB – Again, that ‘A’. I don’t know what Blambot has against A, is it because their name starts with B? If you can overlook that it’s a decent font. I’d wait for a sale on this one TBH.

Hometown Hero BB – This time they added the letter S to their victims. But Hometown Hero has an endearing “this is a comic book!”-like feel to it that will be good for more generic stuff, like a run-of-the-mill shounen, of which there are many, many.

I don’t really like: Eurocomic BB – Nah. Hard to read and not that nice to look at. Might work for a comic strip or webcomic, but not for anything long. Inkslinger BB – Just look at it! MangaMaster BB – What’s ‘manga’ about those pointy bottoms and malformed Os? You can’t just throw the term ‘manga’ in front of everything. Smack Attack BB – Just wrong all over. Webletterer Pro BB – More crimes against the letter A, plus Webletterer has a free version that is only slightly uglier with no italics version. Pass.

Btw, it occurs to me that this post would be a lot more useful if I would post actual usage examples for each font. I’ll try and make it happen sometime over the holidays, maybe not for all of them but at least for some. Or I could try and create some examples, by picking a manga page and using all the fonts on the same page to make a comparison easier. I hope that’s not illegal… maybe there’s a public domain manga from the 40s or 50s out there. Anyway, I’ll look into it. Remind me if I forget.

Also while the best paid fonts usually look much better than the best free ones, you probably shouldn’t start out with those until you’ve learned basic typesetting 101 skills (refer to the link to Vorbis’ site in the previous post) and also have a better idea of the kind of manga/comic/webcomic you’ll be working on.

Okay, see you whenever I feel like putting out Part 3! In the meantime, if you know any good paid comic fonts I forgot to include (or maybe I didn’t forget because I secretly hate it), please share it below!

Fallen Words manga review

Does a manga count as ‘alternative’ if it actually makes sense and isn’t weird at all? 😀 Or should I just keep my mouth shut and be grateful that, unlike the other stuff Drawn & Quarterly has presented, Fallen Words by Yoshihiro Tatsumi is a quick, simple and funny read?

Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s epic memoir A Drifting Life was published in 2009 to overwhelming acclaim, garnering prestigious awards around the world, landing on The New Times “graphic books” best-seller list, and inspiring a feature-film adaptation. For his follow-up, Tatsumi shifted gears dramatically, finding inspiration in the centuries-old Japanese storytelling tradition of rakugo, or “fallen words.” By fusing this comedic, performance-based art form with the visual language of manga, Tatsumi proved that, at the age of seventy-five, he is still one of the medium’s foremost innovators. Humorous, provocative, and thoroughly unpredictable, Fallen Words is a deceptively lighthearted look at the moral quandaries of life and death.

Yes, that’s the secret behind its readability – Fallen Words is simply manga retellings of age-old Japanese folk stories, so to speak. Most of them are funny, a few of them are thought-provoking, and a saddening number of them just revel in the depravity and moral decadence of the Edo Period. It’s not Tatsumi’s fault I suppose, since he is merely retelling stories that have been told and retold thousands of times over hundreds of years. But still the glorying in immorality is sad to watch.

“Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32 NIV). And so it is with Fallen Words, where 3 out of the 8 stories portray the deliberate destruction of innocence as a positive and even amusing occurrence of no great lasting consequence. Pathetic.

What about the other 5 stories? Those were really good, to give credit where credit is due. Some like “The Inkeeper’s Fortune” and “New Year Festival” were happy, lighthearted affairs, and “Escape of the Sparrows” actually made me laugh out loud. Others like “The God of Death” and “Shibahama” were a little more serious, and they’re the ones that look at the moral quandaries of life and death. I can see myself telling the stories to my younger nephews and nieces, with a few minor tweaks here and there.

I must say I really liked Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s style of art as well. Bold lines, simple art that nevertheless contains lots of details. The stark black and white shading with minimal of tone makes the manga feel super modern and yet super old at the same time – I really got the “life in old Edo” feel from it. I really don’t know how he did it, but the art blends with the manga world and moves the whole thing along so effortlessly you wouldn’t even know they were originally ‘rakugo’ stories to begin with.

Honestly I’d like to recommend Fallen Words to anyone who likes comedy manga, especially anyone who is interested in older Japanese culture as well, but the three bad stories “Fiery Spirits”, “Making the Rounds” and “The Rooster Crows” left a rather bad taste in my mouth. So I guess if rampant immorality doesn’t bother you then you’re in luck. For my part, hmm… maybe I’ll cut those pages out…

Goukyuu Shoujo volume 1 manga review

I got through Goukyuu Shoujo volume 1 in two 30-minute sessions. It made me feel silly for all the times I’ve forced myself to slog through some boring, low-quality manga in the hopes that it will get better. It really is the mangaka’s job to make me feel like reading more than a few pages, and despite how generically Goukyuu Shoujo (剛球少女) started out, the team of Seiichi Tanaka and Kiyokazu Chiba kept me turning the pages rapidly and left me profoundly sorry when the book was over. Time to head to Amazon and pick up Goukyuu Shoujo volume 2 and the rest of the series.

But before that, what is Goukyuu Shoujo about? If you’ve watched Princess Nine and read Shikotama or any other series where a girl tries to join a boy’s baseball team, you already know the whole story. Just as in Princess Nine, the main character Haruka Aso has a father who won Koshien and became a major league pitcher, then got embroiled in a scandal that cost him his job. In P9 the dad’s name is Hayakawa, in Goukyuu his name is Natsukawa. Both fathers also die in a car accident. Hayakawa before he was cleared, Natsukawa after, but before he could resume his major league career. Both fathers also trained their prodigiously-talented only daughters to follow in their footsteps. All coincidence? Of course not.

However whereas in P9 Ryo Hayakawa joined a girl’s baseball team, in Goukyuu Shoujo Haruka decides to join the boy’s team in her father’s high school. And, as in Shikotama, the team refuses to let her in because girls can’t play in official games so there’s no point letting her join.

I thought Haruka’s struggles to be accepted would take that bulk of the series, but luckily for her (and me!) a new trainer who just happened to be her dad’s catcher has just been hired and he thinks having Haruka on the team is a great way to shake up the status quo, so he talks the coach into letting her join. Yay!

Unfortunately her struggles aren’t over at that point. While her pitches aren’t that fast, she has great control, and she quickly uses that to strike out the team’s best player (and pitcher) during training. The main coach already wants her out, and now she’s made an enemy of the star player, and he won’t stop at anything to get her off the team. On the other hand the school principal sees her as a good PR gimmick and wants her to pitch in their next practice game… against the strongest team in the prefecture! What does the future hold in store for Haruka?

I can’t wait to find out! As I said the story was nothing new when it started out, but by the end of the first volume it has taken on a life of its own. Haruka herself has changed quite a bit. At first she was grim and gloomy, determined to make it onto the team at all costs, but once she succeeds her original (?) sunny disposition and never-say-die attitude comes to the fore.

To be honest the change does make her feel rather “generic plucky shounen hero”-like but it also makes her that much easier to root for. Cheerful, hardworking girl vs. evil opponents and jealous rivals = the stuff 50% of shoujo manga are made of, after all. Especially when the team catcher is taking more than a passing interest in our little Haruka. Mmhmm…

Enough about that, how’s the baseball action? No official games were played in volume 1, but the little pitching and fielding present was clearly and dynamically presented in an easy-to-follow way. There was rather more “standing and gaping at how awesome Player X is” present than I’m comfortable with, but it was enjoyable nevertheless.

I should also take the chance to mention that the art and the story go together really well like they were both done by the same people. I’ve read several series drawn and written by different people where it seems like the art is going one way while the story is going somewhere different. For example a character will be saying angry words, but his/her portrait doesn’t look that angry at all. Everything in Goukyuu Shoujo meshes well together, and it’s a real pleasure to read.

When I’ve gotten my hands on the 4-volume Bunkoban version I hope to be able to review the rest of the series, though I’ll do my best not to spoil the subsequent story because this is something that’s more fun to read for yourself.

Scout Seishirou manga review

Norifusa Mita is fairly well-known in Japan for his seinen series, most of which revolve around sports. Western manga fans probably only know him for either Investor Z, which Crunchyroll has been releasing, or Dragon Zakura, which was so popular it even got made into a movie. I haven’t read Dragon Zakura and I don’t plan to do so immediately, but I do plan to follow more of Mita’s stuff because he writes a lot of… baseball manga. Yes, I’m still at it. Most of his stuff is fairly long, so I thought I’d cut my teeth on his shortest series, Scout Seishirou.

What happens to failed baseball players when they retire or get canned? If they’re like Seishirou Takemitsu, they go out and get a job like everyone else. Unfortunately Sei has never done anything except play baseball, so he’s terrible at his new job. That’s why he jumps at the chance when his old team hires him back as a baseball scout. Through the eyes of Seishirou, Norifusa Mita takes a look at the baseball scouting process in Japan, from finding a future star to drafting and signing him.

Scout Seishirou is only 2 volumes long, but it does give a taste of the kind of challenges scouts face when trying to sign a player. First off, if the player is any good then you’ll have to fight your way through a swarm of other team scouts to get him. So you want your player to have superstar talents, but at the same time you don’t want him to stand out too much, so it’s a bittersweet feeling when he does.

Apart from competition from other teams, scouts also have to deal with opposition from the player’s family and also help the players overcome their own doubts about their abilities and about going pro. It’s a lot of legwork and traveling, and it’s also hard psychologically because you might go through the trouble of talking a player into wanting to sign for your team… then your team decides not to draft him after all. Not. Cool. But it’s part of being a scout. The manga did tackle (briefly) why teams might choose to sign one player over another even if they both seem equally talented. Attitude seems to have a lot to do with it.

The main character himself can be a bit annoying because he’s a bit timid and wishy-washy, but the manga establishes from the start that that’s his great character flaw and the reason why he quickly got cut from the majors. And he does get a bit better over the course of the series, if only because sitting on your bum whining is sure to get your player signed under you, and then what will you do?

It was an interesting introduction to life behind the scenes in a baseball team, though it did leave a few questions unanswered. Like, for example, how much do Japanese pro scouts make? Do they get any extra money if a player of theirs is signed? Does their stock fall in the company if their player turns out to be a dud?

If questions like that intrigue you, you might be better off reading about the Baseball Scout School the MLB runs in the Dominican Republic instead. But if you’re looking for a short, well-drawn and unexpectedly interesting introduction to the subject then definitely give Scout Seishirou a try. And now it’s time for me to move on to some of Norifusa Mita’s meatier stuff.

Thoughts on The Irregular at Magic High School after episodes 1-6

I’m more into manga and books than anime these days, but since I did name this site Animefangirl.com, I suppose I should watch some anime once in a while. Come to think of it, I should have picked a more manga-like name, but it’s too late now. Anyway I don’t have anything against anime. They just don’t fit my busy lifestyle so it takes me quite a while to get through even a short one these days.

I picked The Irregular at Magic High School because I usually enjoy high-school based series. I was also promised an overpowered main character who has all the side characters standing around going “Wow, he’s so powerful!” in every episode. That kind of premise sounds boring to many people, but I thoroughly enjoyed series like Akagi and One Outs, so I know this could be awesome if the writers tried hard enough.

Summary: In 2095, Tatsuya Shiba and his sister Miyuki Shiba are new students enrolling at the Private Magic University Affiliated High School (First High School). Miyuki topped the entrance exams and is selected to be the first years’ representative, while Tatsuya is placed in Course 2 due to his low practical test scores, despite scoring highest in the written/theoretical portion of the exams.

So I started watching Irregular about two weeks ago, but I only got up to episode 6 because of aforesaid busyness. That, and the show is pretty boring. The opening animation and the first episode fooled me into thinking this would be an action-y kind of show with Tatsuya kicking all kinds of butt with his awesome analytical and ninja-fu skills. Uhh… no. Maybe that part comes later. Like, way later.

All his fights have lasted about 5 seconds so far and then the next 15 minutes of the show is devoted to breaking down the fight like we care. If you like technobabble and world-building and that kind of thing then I suppose you won’t be too bored by all the talking that goes on instead of action, otherwise The Irregular is just a massive snoozefest.

Still there’s more to anime than just action and talking. What about the characters? Uhh… yeah. They exist, vaguely. I think the problem comes from the fact that the show is a light novel adaptation so the director feels compelled to shovel in all the light novel characters even when the show would be better served by taking them out. It’s only episode 6 I know but a lot of characters barely register on the scale. Hattori, for example, pops up again and it’s like “Who?” And I haven’t seen the loli Student Council member in a while so why not just take her out? Erika hadn’t shown up in ages then suddenly she’s the star of episode 6 and it’s like… whaaa?

Which is not to say the main characters are so interesting that I’d like the show to focus on them, though. Tatsuya has all the charm and personality of a brick wall and his sister Miyuki just exists to bring the show down with her forced yandere reactions. Their ‘loving’ pseudo-incest interactions are not cute, not funny, not original and not anything I care to keep watching.

So having said all that will I continue watching The Irregular at Magic High School? Probably not. I have a pretty severe bandwidth limit so I don’t know if I want to waste it on stuff I’m not really enjoying. I’d like to check some forums and see if the series picks up a little later, but discussions tend to be clogged with light novel spoilers, which I’d really rather avoid. I’m going to put this show on the shelf and try some other stuff for now. Maybe I’ll be back later, maybe I won’t.