Thursday, September 20, 2007

No Manga Post Today!

 I had an "emergency" button order so I didn't have time to read a manga today. So instead I'm going to share a funny webcomic link I came across a couple days ago.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

It's called "DM of the Rings" and here is the premise from the site itself:

Lord of the Rings is more or less the foundation of modern D&D. The latter rose from the former, although the two are now so estranged that to reunite them would be an act of savage madness. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign.

It's a webcomic, made with screen caps from Peter Jackson's LoTR trilogy, that ran from September 2006 to September 2007. In that time the creator Shamus pokes, prods and shamelessly rips into every tabletop gaming joke and exposes every plot hole in the LoTR trilogy. If you've ever played D&D, or known someone who has, or happened to hear someone talking about gaming, you'll find this funny.

There are so many things that are annoying about table top roleplaying. The endless math, the people not paying attention to the DM, the DM putting the story on rails and not letting you off, people not staying in character, people staying too much in character...

Some how it's a lot funnier when it's Aragorn and Legolas fighting over who gets the loot or Dave, er, Frodo deciding he'd much rather be a Jedi then a Hobbit.

My main recommendation for reading this comic is to make sure to read the author's "DM notes" at the bottom of each comic. They're hilarious and on point. Then read the comments by the readers. They start off laughing along and then devolve into incredible geekiness that is sometimes funnier then the comic itself (and the comic is pretty darn funny.

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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Manga A Day: Land of The Blindfolded Vol 7

I like CMX, I like the titles they choose to publish. Put they hit one of my pet peeves with land of the blindfolded. They changed the design of the spines on the books halfway through! Books one through five have white spines with a bit "CMX" on the top, a little thumbnail image on the bottom and then the volume number in a white, large font against a green. Then books six through nine have green spines with a little logo on top and a little volume number in a dark green half circle. That means when they're lined up on a shelf together they don't match and look like two different series. This has nothing to do with the quality of this book, but it annoys me. And now to talk about the book.

In Land of the Blindfolded there are people who are born with talents to read the future in the past. Kanade sees flashes of people's future when she touches them, she can't control it so she never knows when it might happen. Arou can read the past with a touch and has great control. Namaki can see the future like Kanade but can control it turning it on and off with a touch. By this book they've mostly come to grips with their abilities.

Kanade even goes so far as to decide to confess to her best friend Eri about her abilities. At the same time Arou's uncle, his mother's brother, Sou turns up after a seven year absence. He invites them all, Eri and her boyfriend, Namaki, Kanade and Arou to a hot spring. He shows Arou to a house where his deceased mother had lived. By touching places and things she touched in the house Arou can see glimpses of his mother, which is a siren call he has battled since he was child.

They seem like really simple storylines, a confession and a temptation, to take up a whole book. There was a cute fall festival chapter that got the ball rolling on the entwined storylines, but it is mostly Arou sitting in a room by himself and Kanade trying to get Eri alone so she can confess. Tsukuba is good at slowly building tension without making the story drag or feel boring. I don't think many could pull that off. I like the subtle hint of threat she gives to Sou at the end to hook you into the next book. It's not a cliffhanger, but it defintely makes you want to read the next one even though there isn't a current obvious storyline that carries over to the next book. Oh! And two people manage to do the old "opps wrong gender bath!" mistake, for a little fanservice.

I really like the artwork in this series. This volume is fun because, between the fall festival and hot spring, there were a lot of kimonos and yukata. The girls look cute and the boys look handsome (and you can even mostly tell them apart!) I'm especially how the expressions are done. Tsukuba uses her characters' eyes to do most of the work. They narrow, widen, go blank, distant, or intense, usually with the clever application of screentone and detail. Instead of using super deformed characters to express extreme emotion, she'll just deform their eyes turning them into dots, dashes or making them disappear completely. It's very engaging and expressive without being distracting.

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Monday, September 17, 2007

Manga A Day: Pretty Maniacs Series Review

Pretty Maniacs is the sequel series to the three book series Maniac Road. It stands pretty well on it's own, but there are a few jokes you'll miss if you don't read both. They're both in the spirit of other Otaku themed books like Genshiken and Comic Party. The first series focused on the Kinushima sisters and Takezou the otaku who helps restore their Akibara store to it's former glory. In this sequel, Takezou has left to build up the US location of the Cauliflower store (an obvious parody of the famous Broccoli.) His younger sister Shinano has gotten into a local high school and seeks to find fellow "maniacs" like herself.

The first series was written like a primer on Otaku life. It had chapters on models, doll-making, games... and explaining the fans of each. This series has a less defined focus, and has a slightly more plot based focus. I say slightly because the plot seems to be "Let's make a manga club." That goal is accomplished in the first book.

The second book has the Shinano's all girl school combining with a boy's school. This means that the manga clubs from both must now combine. That's resolved pretty quickly and the other chapters are more or less filler. (How can a three volume series have one that's mostly filler?) The storylines are typical of a high school manga, with a school fair storyline, and a love letter storyline. The love letter storyline is my favorite, it has the most interesting "hook" at the end. The last two chapters get back into the otaku vibe with a focus on reality vs. fantasy (i.e. Voice actors don't look like their characters) and otaku pros vs amateurs. Also, misunderstandings with friends.

I think it's funny that "Otaku" stories are becoming common enough that they have their own cliches. Taking on Comiket (or whatever they call it in that universe), the American otaku, graduating club members, cross-dressing. Volume three hits all of them to varying degrees. I do like this series, but compared to Maniac Road it feels very watered down. I think it's because that the author was much more familiar with the subject matter of the first books. I think it's easy to write about being an otaku loving otaku things when you are one. 

This series really shines the most when it is focusing on those little aspects of geek life that ring true to fans. One of my favorite things about the first book is when Shinano finally finds a fellow "maniac," they find their tastes are totally different. Shinano likes the original Gundam, Yura likes G-Gundam. Shinano plays the newest games, Yura likes the classics. Shinano likes the original Kamen Rider, Yura likes to pair the riders together in yaoi couples. I think most fans (of anything) have had that experience. You run into someone who knows what Anime/manga is, get excited, and then find out they're a One Piece fan and you're Naruto fan, or you like Snow Fairy Sugar and they like Bible Black. Sometimes it's just not enough to both like anime.

I also liked when the fans were arguing which "P Hyoro" character is the best. One of the characters turns to another and asks if they shouldn't try to break it up. He says that one of the pleasures of being a fan is arguing about the characters with fellow fans. Since most fandoms I know do spend lots and lots of time in character arguments this rang very true. It's for these little bits that I would recommend the series, though I think the first series, Maniac Road, delivers this kind of feeling much better.

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