Oldtaku: Anime for Grownups

Generally I only talk anime here, but I read manga too and it’s not too often we get a new shot at a periodic manga anthology.  Generally the niche is a nonstarter, with one failed attempt after another (anyone remember Raijin?). The English version of Shonen Jump manages to keep going because there’s a never-ending market for Naruto and Yugi-oh (they even realized they could entirely remove the plot from Yugi-oh to get Yugi-oh GX and it made no difference). But now we’ve got a new competitor.

Overview

I got issue 1 when it came out, but wanted to at least get issue 2 before saying anything to give the series a chance to ramp up, and now I’ve read that. The format is interesting:  on the right half you have 5 Japanese series which read right to left.  On the left half you have 5 Korean and US series which read left to right.

Overall I have to say the production values are great for your $10. It’s large format and much higher quality paper than the magazines are originally printed on in Japan. The translation and lettering are quite good – at least I never thought I could have done a better job myself, as has been the case with some recent crap from Del Rey and Viz.  The original sound effects are left as they were and then annotated with both a romanized and translated version.  So you might see a ヒューーーー for wind and then next to it a little ‘hyuuuu (whoosh)’. You could just dismiss this as cheaper than entirely redrawing the effect, but I prefer it since it preserves the art and is good reading practice.

So that leaves the content. If Shonen Jump is for pre-pubescent boys who just want to see stuff blowing up then this is targeted at pubescents who’ve discovered their brothers’ porn stashes. Stuff blowing up but with panty shots and romance. Whereas Shonen Jump knows it’s for young boys Yen+ is a little schizophrenic about which gender it’s targetting. Also interesting is that every one of the Japanese side series has an anime tie-in, and I’m not sure if that was intentional or not.

Japanese Side

Soul Eater: This one is kind of stylish. It’s fight fight fight with some comedy: basically Bleach Lite with more gratuitous nudity and wackiness, but I do like the visual ideas. Unfortunately the the anime executes them much better and I can’t see any reason to read the manga instead of watching the anime.

Nabari no Ou. ‘King of Ninjas’ more or less. More fight fight fight but it’s an interesting hybrid since the visual style is shoujo with lots of lanky pretty boys, and shoujo tropes abound.  The manga’s pretty comparable to the anime, but neither really grabbed me much.

Bamboo Blade. School sports comedy/drama about a girls’ kendo team (there are two boys, but they’re mostly sideline).  This is probably the best manga in the book (I’ve read several volumes raw) – it doesn’t degenerate into harem even given the setup, there’s no exploitation, there’s no ridiculous powaaaaa up! escalation. It’s just fun.  There is a bit of buffet of girls in the setup, but it’s never really abused.  I think the anime actually has better (cleaner) art, but either is good.

Higurashi: When They Cry.  This is a weird combination of horrendously cute fanservice with explicit horror, torture, and dismemberment that switches modes at the drop of a hat. You can see my review of the anime here. The manga undeniably has better art, but the anime (at least the first season) is paced far better. Two months in and if you didn’t already know what was coming I think you’d be pretty bored with the manga at this point.

Sumomomo Momomo. Fighting comedy. Super-strong martial artist girl who happens to look like an 8 year old wants to have a baby with weak nebbish boy and constantly begs him to impregnate her in uncomfortable pedo scenes. A girl who fights in a literal bondage outfit shows up later.  Again there’s an anime, but I wouldn’t bother with either.

English/Korean Side

Maximum Ride.  A Korean-drawn adaptation of James Patterson’s teen action adventure books. The art is well done and at least the story isn’t another frickin’ love comedy.  I haven’t read the books, so I don’t really find myself involved yet, even after two episodes. It seems to involve some aggressively diverse good-guy bird-people against some gnarrr gnarr evil wolf-people and mad scientists who want to dissect them.

Nightschool. This is your token amerimanga , which if you read any plot-based webcomics you’re probably overly familiar with. The art’s not bad at all (though completely formula for the genre),  but the plot and delivery are total cliche with the usual glut of ‘tee hee’ asides and fourth wall breaking the format demands.  To be fair, this isn’t a uniquely amerimanga thing (see Kaze Hikaru for instance) but the inability to escape it seems to be.  I’m not sure who to blame for that – Gold Digger and Ninja High School? Anyhow, you’ve seen this before.

Pig Bride. Supernatural school love comedy/drama in shoujo style. When the male lead was a young boy he got lost and was forced to marry a young girl in a pig mask. He writes it off as a dream, but now that he’s living at school guess who shows up? I actually kind of like this one because it’s so formula (and the manga style is dead on) that the little uniquely Korean bits really stand out.

Sarasah. Supernatural school love comedy/drama in shoujo style. No, not a copy and paste error. But this one is a bit more dramatic than Pig Bride. The heroine’s been stalking (no other word for it) her school crush for a while, till he gets fed up and pushes her down some stairs, killing her. But now she gets another chance thanks to a sympathetic goddess. I don’t really like the main character, but obviously redemption is part of the theme here (or had better be). Art is good, as expected.

One Fine Day. This is just airy cuteness. You’ve got this spaced out guy who owns (?) a mouse, cat, and a dog, though maybe they’re his familiars because he’s apparently a wizard. And they show up randomly as kids in animal suits instead of animals. Nothing really happens except random surreal cute stuff – he buys some eggs to make breakfast and they hatch into little gangster chicks. The art is light and open to go with the breeziness of the story. I actually like this in small doses.

Jack Frost. This is the polar opposite of One Fine Day. It’s Hellsing-style, all thick dark blacks and violence and dismemberment. It’s also got more cheesecake than I’ve ever seen in manwha – nakedness is one thing, but I’m not used to seeing Video Girl Ai type lovingly rendered crotch shots (as seen from the PoV of the girl’s own decapitated head – wha?). The plot is pretty much total trash, but I have to admit I kind of like the art style in general.

Conclusion(?)

I’m not sure if I have a conclusion.  Technically this worth the price.  It’s a lot of pages and high quality reproduction/translation.  It’s certainly worth more than the $10 you’re paying per volume of Naruto,  but the bigger problem is that I’m not sure if this is worth the time to read it when you could be reading or watching something better.