Manga the week of 2/2

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Well, I may have lost my mojo for writing reviews, but I can at least tell you what’s coming out next week. It’s another big one, as Viz makes up for their relatively small January with a pile of stuff.

In non-Viz news, Bandai has the final volume of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. The first of the many spinoffs from the Code Geass anime, I believe this one hews closest to the actual source. Which means I’ll be skipping it, as the original Geass is far too bleak for me.

Dark Horse has the 23rd Volume of Blade of the Immortal, another of their manga series that have been running since forever. And it’s still running in Kodansha’s Afternoon magazine, so don’t expect it to end anytime soon. I’m not certain how good sales are, but I think it does OK, and, like Oh My Goddess, is something of a legacy license for Dark Horse. There’s also Volume 5 of Ghost Talker’s Daydream, a shonen manga that can best be described by Dark Horse: ‘Saiki Misaki, our albino dominatrix necromancer hero…’ There’s other text after that, but I think most readers are content to stop there.

Seven Seas has one debut and one license rescue. I know very little about Amnesia Labyrinth, which looks to be a thriller manga with a side of horror. It comes from ASCII Mediaworks’ Dengeki Bunko magazine, which is mostly light novel oriented but apparently has a manga or two. The real reason I’m interested, though, is that the author of this manga is Nagaru Tanigawa, better known as the author of the Haruhi Suzumiya novels. The license rescue is Gunslinger Girl, also from ASCII Mediaworks, in their main Dengeki Daioh title. It was probably one of ADV Manga’s more popular titles back when ADV Manga existed. Seven Seas has picked it up, and is releasing the first 3 volumes in one big tome, with 4-6 to follow in a month or two. I never did get around to knowing much about it beyond ‘lolis with guns’, but perhaps the omnibus will show off its strengths.

After a brief delay, Vertical is releasing Volume 13 of Black Jack. Vertical, as many know, blew everyone away today with the announcement that they had not only picked up Princess Knight (Ribon no Kishi), the legendary Tezuka shoujo manga, but also Drops of God (Kami no Shizuku), the amazingly popular and influential wine manga that runs in Weekly Morning. It is therefore a good reminder that they are also still putting out awesome legendary Black Jack stuff. Like this.

And so we come to Viz. They have two debuts as well, though one is ‘done in one’. Mistress Fortune is a Tanemura shoujo manga, and was likely licensed by Viz even before she thought of the idea. Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (Nurarihyon no Mago) is their new Jump series, about a kid trying to be a spirit master. Coincidentally, this starts just as Shaman King ends. :)

On the shonen side we also have new volumes of Bakuman, D.Gray-Man, Gin Tama, Naruto, One Piece, Slam Dunk, and Tegami Bachi. Well, if it’s the first week of the month, it’s gotta have a lot of Jump. Gin Tama and One Piece are my BUY THIS NOW!!! recommendations from that pile. There’s also the 2nd Genkaku Picasso, also technically a Jump manga, which will hopefully continue to have great weird art and be less predictable.

On the shoujo end, we have a few big guns as well. The new Kimi Ni Todoke, for one thing. Another Otomen, which I will make a wild guess will reveal that a previously thought masculine guy has secret girly hobbies. (Call it a hunch.) Black Bird, which sells like hotcakes. Or more likely, like Hot Gimmicks. Grand Guignol Orchestra, which will feature more beautifully drawn death, no doubt. Haruka: Beyond the Stream of Time, which zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz oh sorry, fell asleep there. And new volumes of Seiho Boys’ High School and Story of Saiunkoku, both of which turned out to be pleasant surprises for me.

Lastly, there’s two new Pokemon mangas out. I never know what to write about these. They’re from Shogakukan, they’re omnipresent, and apparently Pokemon fans quite like them.

So what do you plan on getting?

Private Snafu Golden Classics

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Originally released by Warner Brothers as part of the Army/Navy Screen Magazine. Released to DVD by Thunderbean Animation.

Movies and cartoons that are in the public domain tend to have both blessings and curses. On the plus side, they’re easy to get. Public Domain means that the creators didn’t renew their copyright when they should have, or, alternately, that the copyright is now too old to stay in effect. (Less so the second now with Disney enforcing their Mickey Mouse rules.) This means that the titles are not languishing in studio vaults, waiting for someone to release them to see if they make a buck. Anyone with a print of the film can slap it on a DVD. The drawback is that that print could be a nth-generation copy that’s barely viewable. And studios have no real desire to restore and remaster public domain films, as they’re already competing with 9 DVDs that have it on sale for $9.99. A good example for me is the screwball comedy Nothing Sacred, a favorite of mine. It’s easily available on DVD – but looks horrible. You’d think that it was colorized from black and white, the prints are that bad. What’s more, in the world of animated cartoons, you can see the same things bundled over and over together. A Corny Concerto, Fresh Hare, All This and Rabbit Stew – all these are on the same countless dollar mart VHS tapes, in the same dull, washed-out (or overly dark) prints.

It is therefore a delight when you have someone like Steve Stanchfield, the man behind Thunderbean Animation and its collections of classic animation. Steve is NOT going to put out one of these collections. He researches painstakingly and gets the best prints he can find. Private Snafu, the title I’m reviewing here, has been released complete before – as ‘The Uncensored Private Snafu’, among others. Heck, Warner Brothers has even released a few Snafu cartoons themselves on the Golden Collections. And yet they all had flaws (WB in particular had a print of The Goldbrick with an awful audio track). This collection here is the one where you can get all the Snafu that is currently extant, in the best prints possible, restored and remastered.

Now, on to Snafu himself. As the war began, the Army developed a film unit that was dedicated to using film to promote the war – both at home and for the soldiers fighting abroad. One of the things that they did was a newsreel devoted solely for the soldier – these were newsreels not meant for public consumption. As part of them, the army (and Frank Capra, the famous director who was in charge of the whole shebang) commissioned a series of cartoons that were designed to teach the soldier lessons using amusing ‘what not to do’ scenarios. Originally pitched to Disney, Schlesinger’s studio put in a lower bid and won the contract. And I’m pleased that they did. I love Disney (who did cartoons like this for civilians, usually starring Donald Duck), but the zanier, more anarchic humor of Warners cartoons suited the Snafu series – and the Army – better.

Snafu, of course, stands for Situation Normal – All F… Fouled Up. The cartoons starred a schlub of a private who could usually be counted on to do the wrong thing – blab secrets, spread rumors, take poor care of his equipment, and generally be a poor soldier. They were directed by the great Warner directors of the time – Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, and Frank Tashlin – and the first dozen or so were written by Theodore Geisel, better known to most of you as Dr. Seuss. This is easy to tell with the first cartoons on here – Snafu speaks in Seussian rhyme, and we even see a few weird Seuss-like creatures in some cartoons like Rumors. They were about 4 minutes long each, a little over half the length of a WB cartoon at the time, so none of them wore out their welcome.

The cartoons were only meant for soldiers, so the crew got away with things that wouldn’t fly if they were being cleared by the Hays commission. There are some sexy-clad women, and Snafu occasionally cusses. The worst it gets is ‘damn’ and ‘ass’, though – by today’s standards, this is pretty much PG-13 at most. They tease this, in fact, when they spell out the meaning of Snafu’s name – but don’t use the F-word. Snafu is also killed off in several of the cartoons, but that’s not unusual for the period at all, and none of the deaths are incredibly gruesome. The worst thing you can say about these today is that they do contain some grotesque Japanese stereotypes – but not as many as you’d expect, as usually Snafu was his own worst enemy.

There are 25 Snafu cartoons on this disc, along with some added extras. These include the Seaman TARFU cartoon that Harman/Ising did after the war ended, and several animated instructional videos that were also part of the Army Magazine, usually taking on topics like inflation or dysentary. My favorites in this collection include The Goldbrick, where Snafu is tempted towards laziness by a fairy who later turns out to be the enemy (and which uses Tit Willow as the medley for its rhymes, despite Gilbert & Sullivan NOT being in public domain at the time!); Booby Traps, the naughtiest cartoon of the collection, featuring Snafu being lured into a harem filled with girls who are… well, the title, and which features the origin of the ‘piano explodes when Those Endearing Young Charms is played’ gag; Gas, a particularly well animated cartoon showing why you need to carry your gas mask at all times (and one where Snafu actually learns his lesson!); Three Brothers, where Snafu whines about his boring Army life and finds that his brothers, also in the service, have different but equally demanding jobs; and Hot Spot, a wartime cartoon devoted to the wonders of Iran (no, really) and narrated by Satan (no, REALLY).

Surprisingly for a PD collection, there are multiple commentaries on these cartoons, from most of the modern cartoon experts. Jerry Beck, Eric Goldberg, and Mark Mayerson all have great things to say (Goldberg in particular is a great speaker), and John “Ren and Stimpy” Kricfalusi is also fun once you provide for his Bob Clampett-itis. There’s also some still galleries, alternative soundtracks, etc.

Basically, if you like classic cartoons at all, this is THE collection to have for Private Snafu. Complete, uncut, the prints look fantastic, and they’re all just funny stuff, from the legends of the time. You can argue that a few of them go overboard in their lecturing – but that was, after all, the point. A soldier seeing Snafu drying out his wet boots on top of a stove – which, of course, destroys the shoes much faster and makes for more $$$ spent – is going to have a laugh of recognition, because hey, who wants wet shoes, and it’s fast, right? Snafu may be the guy who does nothing right, but he’s not too far away from us. Heck, towards the end of this series, he even gets to be the winner once or twice!

You can purchase it here, by the way: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=B004G6FHCU/theunofficlooneyA/

Manga the week of 1/26

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After a couple weeks where it seemed as if no manga were coming out at all, it falls to the good folks at Tokyopop to remind us that they’re back, and releasing more than ever! Plus Yen gets in the act as well with their January slate.

We actually start with DMP, which has 2 yaoi titles coming out, including one called No Touching At All. I have not read the manga in question, but given its genre, I’m going to make a wild guess that there will, in fact, be touching. And Tokyopop’s Blu imprint has a book from their new best friends, Gentosha, with the odd title You And Me Etc.

Back to Tokyopop proper, they have more cute shoujo coming out! Whee! We get the second volume of The Stellar Six of Gingacho, whose first surprised me with how big a smile it put on my face. There’s another Portrait of M & N, the silly series by the author of Gakuen Alice. There’s a new Gakuen Alice too, though we’re getting near the point in the series where I’m going to have to stop calling it ‘cute’ as it gets darker and darker. In non-Hakusensha shoujo, there’s the final volume of Mad Love Chase and the 4th of Momogumi Plus Senki, both from Kadokawa’s weird shoujo fantasy thing Asuka. And we even have (gasp!) a josei title this week, as they relase the 8th volume of cult hit Pet Shop of Horrors Tokyo, which comes from our friends at Asahi Shinbunsha, best known over here for… well, this.

On the shonen side, we see the debut of Lives, a new manga from Akita Shoten’s Champion Red. Those who are familiar with the type of reader Champion Red gets know what sort of reader they’re going for here. Expect a lot of fanservice and violence. Speaking of Akita Shoten, we also get the 7th volume of Samurai Harem from their monthly Shonen Champion. There’s also a pile of Kadokawa stuff, from the new Fate/Stay Night to Deadman Wonderland and the 2nd AiON (only a month after the first), all from Shonen Ace or Dragon Age, their two big shonen magazines.

Rounding off Tokyopop, we see at long last the 4th volume of the Full Metal Panic novels, Ending Day By Day. This was released as 2 novels in Japan, Part 1 and Part 2, but is being bundled together here. I’d love to see it sell better than the others have, if only as I want to see the rest of the books. (FMP, like Haruhi, has the major issue of the anime following the novel so closely that those who watched the anime first feel no need to buy the text version.) This one’s really good, though. There’s the 6th volume of the seinen Maria Holic, which no doubt will continue making fun of yuri tropes. And oh look, a new volume of .hack//Christ On A Bike.

(My lawyers advise me to note here that I bear no legal responsibility if you buy the new .hack and find that it does not, in fact, contain Christ, bicycles, or any combination thereof.)

Let’s move on to Yen, which also has a big fanservicey debut with High School of the Dead. This comes from Kadokawa’s Dragon Age, and many people were surprised at Yen getting it, but they have been expanding their range, so let’s see what they can do with it. I understand it has zombies in high school, in any case. Speaking of Kadokawa, we also have the 2nd Omamori Himari, which, along with Sumomomo Momomo, tells me that someone in Yen’s licensing department is taking the mickey. There’s more game-based bishoujo tease with Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution, and the penultimate volume of Spiral. There are new Black Butler and Pandora Hearts volumes from GFantasy (their motto: look, we’re shonen, OK? Just shut up!). And lastly, there’s the second volume in the Book Girl novels, featuring a Famished Spirit. I greatly enjoyed the first book, so look forward to this.

So what inspires you this week?