Why I'm reading more manga

For about the last year or so, I've found myself reading more manga than American Comics.  In fact, it's not even especially close.  Why is that?

Well, I'm sure that I can pinpoint various reasons, including some things I said way back when this blog was more or less active, but I think it comes down to a few things.  I'm just meandering and writing off the cuff here, so take it as it is.

First off, I enjoy that manga is so much more self contained than comics from the Big Two.  Once upon a time, I really enjoyed the expansive universes that Marvel and DC had, where you had all kinds of characters across all kinds of books doing all kinds of things.  There's still something neat about that, but frankly, I think it causes more headaches than anything.

I imagine a part of it is the simple marketing aspect.  You want to push a new character?  Give them a cameo in a bigger book!  Who cares if it really fits that book or not, you need to find a way to work them in!

The deeper problem though is that it really creates way too much opportunity to crush the narrative flow.  I've commented before on the problems that big events create on books.  A book can really be cruising along, and then here comes the big event, and things start changing.  It's worse when the entire universe gets rebooted. (See: DC).

On the other hand, most manga tends to be self-contained stories.  The author is much more free to tell the story that they want to. They can build it, and bring it to a satisfying end on their own terms.  I just read Servant x Service not long ago, and in the final volume, the author brought it to a very clean, unrushed ending, with the major subplots all dealt with in a very satisfying way.  I'm sure manga authors get more than a few "editorial suggestions" along the way, but they don't seem to be nearly as destructive or disruptive as being part of the shared universes of Marvel and DC.

Of course, this is helped a great deal by the fact manga titles are closely tied to the author.  If you're reading a Big Two book, you never know when the author or penciller will get changed for some unfathomable editorial reason, with who knows what results.  You don't get that with manga in the same way.  That helps again with the whole "keeping the narrative flow" idea.

Secondly, I do believe I'm getting fairly close to being heroed out.  Oh, I still like the movies, and some of the manga I read are "heroic", but Manga have a great deal more freedom to be about pretty much anything.  I've hugely enjoyed manga lately about "Love, grief and baseball", "Competitive Japanese game with cards," and "Working in a prefectural office" lately*, as just a few examples.

I imagine that largely goes to the fact that I've always been more interested in the characters than heroism or the like, and some of these books are fantastic character studies.

Now, I realize, that a great deal of what I've said here likely also applies to at least some Indie comics here in the US.  A great deal of the Indie stuff I've seen has just been another guy's take on superheroes (Astro City, Irredeemable for instance), but I know that there's other stuff out there,and if you have suggestions, feel free to post them, I'm always willing to gake a gander.



* Cross Game, Chihayafuru, Servant x Service

Panthelia: Bound

A quiet morning, and a bit of a ficlet here.  This is the Origin of my world of Panthelia.  As with most things, it's very much a WIP, but it's really something to set up the overall cosmology.

Special trivia challenge: Who can figure out what movie characters the two brothers are based on? Bwahahahhahaha.  I'll answer later.


++

The two beings were ancient beyond telling, yet they were neither source nor beginning. When they came into being, there was already existence, there was already life. Neither fully understood his nature, but simply knew that they were the only two beings of their nature in the universe.

When they awakened, they found a great multitude of worlds that already teemed with life spread across the stars. The inhabitants of those worlds were varied and fascinating to the two brothers, for that is how they'd come to think of one another.

For many eons, the brothers were well content to watch and observe the countless worlds. They debated endlessly why one world took one path, while others branched out in different ways. They saw worlds destroy themselves in mindless fury, while others would overcome all the challenges of hatred and survive another day, another year, another eon.

In time, the simple sport of watching the countless worlds began to lose some of its appeal, and the two brothers decided it was time to start experimenting on the worlds. At first, many of their actions were small and subtle, and they delighted in watching the ripples of their work bring changes to the worlds they experimented on.

This game went on for many more centuries, with the brothers endlessly debating the consequences of one action or another. They shaped worlds to their liking again and again. On one world, they would fill it with magic, to see how the people of that would would cope with such awesome power. On another world, they would strip it of all magic, that they might observe how people built a world on understanding, craft and artifice.

One day, a new debate arose between the brothers: “Could a world escape the bounds of a tight and devastating fate?” Long they debated, but both knew where the debate would end. There would need to be a world with a fate of devastation and destruction laid upon it. They would weave the fate to create a time where that fate could be challenged, and see where it led.

They found a world, one that already had life, but they began to reshape it to their whim. It had been a world with weak magic, but they poured more and more power into that world, concentrated it, and then tied it behind a strong but fragile barrier. Would would this world do with that power? They filled the world with magical creatures, who would live side by side with humanity. They brought dragons from a far distant world, and filled them with yet greater power, the power to speak and reason. They might be shepherds or wolves, as their whims would lead them.

Yet, the dragons were not the centerpiece of their experiment, but one part. The centerpiece, those upon whom fate would be focused, would be the Ten. Ten people, some with great power, some with none, but all of them chained by fate in one form or another. Men and women of joy and tragedy, vision and blindness, power and helplessness. They were bound and chained by fate, yet the last of them would be the one who would have a moment, the least opportunity to sunder those shackles and avert destruction.

For those ten, a great hall was built, nowhere and yet between everywhere, a place where the Ten could abide while the experiment continued. From the day they passed from this world until the day the experiment ended, they would remain in the Hidden Hall. Was this a blessing or a curse? The brothers cared little. They people they watched were but the subjects of their experiments.

Would those Ten stand or fall? Would that world stand or fall. To the brothers, it was simply a question they would use to pass the time. However, to the people of that world, bound by that fate, it was something far greater. It was their own lives and loves, their own joys and sorrows which they played with.

In all their debate, the brothers did not consider what rage the people of that world might show them in time. What is more, they had long forgotten to consider a simple question: “If the brothers were not the first, then what was?”

What anime character do you fear?

Yesterday, I managed in my usual klutzy fashion to knock the DVD case for Crest of the Stars off my shelf.  Well, it popped open and disk 1 fell out.  I glanced at the disk and noticed that there was a scratch on the disk.  Well now, what do you do?  I threw it into the player to see if it would still work.

Where did that end? Well, I ended up mainlining all of Crest. (On to Banner!)  I'd forgotten just how much I love that series, and well, away we go.

In any case, I was talking about this last night to the guy who'd originally gotten me to watch Crest/Banner, and mentioned that I hadn't caught how intense Lafiel's death-glare is in Crest before.  Likely that's because I now know just how scary she can be from Banner 2, and can see the signs in her confrontation with Febdash.

Long story short, that brought up the question "What anime characters do you really not want to make mad at you?"  Honestly, that's a bit of an odd question.  There are lots and lots and lots of anime characters who have the power to just entirely wipe you off the face of the earth... yet there are fewer who have the ability to excite a level of existential dread "I'm doomed!"  The kind of enemy you will always be looking over your shoulder for, even if you think you've gotten away.

So, in any case, I have been thinking of the list, and here are some thoughts.  Now, this will simply be heroes and tweeners.  Of course, you know the villain is going to be out for your hide.

1) Lafiel: Crest/Banner of the Stars.

People who haven't seen Crest/Banner might not think of Lafiel as so scary. She's young, thin, almost waifish.  Surely someone who looks like this can't be dangerous:

 
She's honestly kind of adorable (and shows us why we call this show "Elves in Space")

On the other hand:

Urk!  Same series (Crest of the Stars) but that's what you get when you upset her.  Don't ever think of upsetting an Abh.  Just don't.

2) Roy Mustang (Full Metal Alchemist).  What do you get when you have a pyrokinetic who knows how to hold a grudge? (Spoilers here if you haven't seen FMAB)

He's perhaps the perfect example.  The man has a serious grudge, the power to back it up, and that enjoyment that comes from seeing his revenge done,

3) Shiroe (Log Horizon)

This one is a bit weird.  He's never killed anyone, and quite frankly, with the rules of the world, he can't. (Well, it's a trapped in a video game world, so anyone he does kill just gets rezzed.)  That said, he's called the Villain in Glasses for a reason.  He's usually at least 3 steps ahead of anyone, and doesn't much mind humiliating or breaking you in the process.  Utterly ruthless, but thankfully he's on the side of the angels.

Sadly, this vid is not the best Shiroe moment (I'd say that's when he creates the Round Table), but it's good.  Oh, Krusty gets an honorable mention.  In Log Horizon, always beware the people in glasses.  Always.

Maybe I'll put up some more as I think of them.

Remember, the idea isn't simply "the one who can kill you dead in a messy way."  We've got plenty of those from Kenshiro onward, but the ones who inspire that unholy fear that reaches into the depths of your lower colon.

(Honorable Mentions off the top of my head: Harlock, Emeraldas, Mirya Parino, Rally Cheyenne, Rally Vincent, Sylia Stingray.)

Twin Exiles: Prologue

Well, in the last couple days, a few plot bunnies have decided to be born, and this is the start of the story that drags them together.  This is all part of a larger universe I have of Panthelia.  I have a number of stories here, but quite frankly, the older stories need to be rethought from moment one.

In any case, I figured I may as well use this dusty blog to put up bits and pieces as I write.

Twin Exiles

Prologue

There are few highlights in the growth of a young dragon more dramatic than the first time it's allowed to fly beyond the bounds of the Eyrie. Yet, it's an intensely private moment as well. Maybe it was because there were so few young dragons. There was a natural temptation to make that first flight a community event, a kind of “coming out party” for the new flier. However, the traditions of the Eyrie were clear. The young dragon would be allowed to choose its own path. The parents may want to fuss and fly protective circles, but not even they were allowed to interfere in the first flight.

Arsiana stood alone at the edge of the cliff, her shoulder length hair whipping in the wind. She looked like many other ten year old girls, except for that hair. Her raven black hair had a slight metallic sheen to it, a color you would not find in humans. It contrasted with her pale skin, but matched her deep black eyes.

Arsiana took another look over the cliff, at the ground far below her. She didn't feel a single bit of fear, but instead she was filled with excitement. She was going to soar into those clouds, and see a world that she'd never seen with her own eyes.

She smiled and concentrated slightly, placing her hands together in front of her, palm to palm. She was quickly surrounded by an inky black cloud, and within that cloud, she began to grow and change. Where there had been a little girl, there now stood a dragon. She wasn't an especially large dragon to be sure, only about ten foot from nose to tail, but she was still young, and had many years left to grow. She was covered in metallic black scales, and a hint of her black hair remained as a mane on the back of her head.

She extended her black wings and jumped off the cliff, catching herself in the winds which swirled about the high mountain of the Eyrie. She'd been told that the wings couldn't truly carry her, they were too small, too weak to carry her weight. However, the wings were a part of the magic of dragonflight. Dragons who'd lost their wings in a fight or an accident found themselves unable to fly ever again. Arsiana's wings did not fail her. She soared across the sky, exulting in the pure joy of her very first flight.

She looked down at the ground far below her. She was flying above a forest which ran on both sides of a small river. There was a small clearing in the woods, and she could make out the buildings far below her which marked it as a town of some kind. She no sooner saw that town, and an irresistable urge came over her. She needed to go down to that town and look at it. The need to see this town cried out in her mind.

She angled her flight down, and started to descend to the town far below her. Slowly but surly, the details of the town filled her vision. She knew it wasn't one of the great cities of the humans, she'd been told that none of them were close enough to the Eyrie for her to reach in the short time she'd been flying.

What was she looking for? She really had no idea. It was something important, but she had no idea what. She landed in the courtyard of the town, not really noticing the surprised reactions of the townspeople. If she'd been looking closely, she might have noticed that many of them seemed nervous, and a couple of them looked to where they kept their weapons.

Arsiana never noticed these things, because she was focused on a single house in town. It wasn't a large or grand house, but it was somehow important to her. Slowly, the head of a young girl appeared in one of the windows. She looked to be a little younger than Arsiana did when she was in her human form. Is this what she was looking for? Arsiana looked again, and the girl looked back at her. Their eyes met, and in that moment, Arsiana knew: this wasn't the one. This isn't what was calling her, but somehow, some way, she was connected to it.

After a few moments, Arisiana decided that her parents were likely getting a bit nervous about where she was. She jumped into the air, and began the long, slow climb back to the Eyrie. Mother had promised that they'd have all of her favorites for dinner tonight, and she could almost smell the roast mutton already.

++

A young girl watched the black dragon ascend into the sky. “Mother? Why did that black dragon come here? Why was it looking at Cerena's house?”

The queen knelt down next to her daughter “I don't know Alelneia, it seemed to be looking for something.”

++

Nerlana, High Queen of the Dragons watched as the young black dragon flew up over the edge of the launching cliff. “The poor dear, she looks tired. She must have flown all the way to the ground.”

She watched as Arsiana turned back into her human form, and ran into the arms of her proud mother. “It's been a good day. It's been too long since we've had a first flight,” she thought. “I just hope that the rest of her days are filled with joy, instead of something worse...”

Even as that thought entered her mind, she noticed something. She looked closely at the young girl with her ancient gold eyes. The child had returned bearing the mark of fate. Only the eyes of a gold dragon could see that cursed mark, but it made clear that this young girl's life would be marked with triumph and joy, and difficulty and sorrow. She could only hope that she Arsiana would see more joy than sorrow.   

Transformation Continues

A few days ago, I was talking to a friend about anime, and one of the things that had slowly driven him away was all the repeated tropes that he saw.  I somewhat glibly replied "that's why I'm mostly watching slice-of-life stuff any more, I haven't had all the tropes pounded into my head for 20 years the way I have with mecha and action"

I bring this up, because I really do find myself transitioning to slice of life stuff more and more as I choose what to watch.  I've mentioned it here before, but it's been driven home to me again in a couple of ways this weekend.

First of all, one of the CM's at Crunchyroll had a tweet up asking people to list their favorite anime from each of the last 5 years.  My list:

2013 Chihayafuru
2014 Your Lie in April
2015 Sound! Euphonium
2016 March Comes in Like a Lion
2017 Interviews w/Monster Girls


Now, Interview is a bit of an odd man out there, mostly because 2017 is still pretty new. (Sakura Quest is promising so far, but its only a few eps in, and we have most of the year to go.) Otherwise, all the rest are very firmly into the "slice of life" realm.  No magic, no mecha, no violence worse than an occasional slap.  Card games, music and shogi drive the stories.

Yet, these are the stories I find myself drawn to.  For that matter, I find myself drawn to these small stories when I look at new shows and the like.

The second thing that drove it home was that I've spent a good bit of the weekend power-reading the manga "Cross Game."  It's a few years older, but its the story of 2 neighbor kids who both love baseball, who slowly but surely become closer after the older sister of the girl tragically dies in the 5th grade. (For that matter, I really wish I'd watched it before Hulu took it down.  I'd wanted to, but never got that far. Grr.)

Why have I done this? As I've said before, it's not entirely unheard of for me.  I loved Kimagure Orange Road back in the early days, and there are times I wonder what other SoL gems I may have missed in the years that few of them were brought over.  Still though, why?

I guess it's that the stories are so intensely character focused.  Now, that's not to say that action and mecha shows aren't.  Macross isn't anything special without Misa and Minmei, Patlabor is nothing at all without Noa and Gotoh and Clancy, and so forth.

Yet, it seems that something in those slice of life shows just grabs me at this point in my life.  It may have something to do with my age, where I am in my life, the struggles I'm fighting with.  I don't know.

I can sit here, and think about some of the themes that are in those stories, the voices, and how they hit me in my current struggles, but I'm not sure I want to just throw those aspects of my personal darknesses onto the net at the moment. Heh.

I don't remember the last mecha show I truly got into.  There are still some fantasy/adventure type shows I've greatly enjoyed recently, but they're absolutely a tier down from here.

Anyway, I'm always looking for suggestions about good SoL shows.  Just be sure I can get at them on CR, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Strike or the like. Heh.  I'm still an old fussbudget.

A Silent (but profound) Voice.

It's probably in part because I'm getting to be something of an old cuss at this point, but I've certainly found my tastes shifting in anime and manga both.  If you look back at the last couple years (there are very few posts, so it's not hard), you'll find that I've been tending more and more towards Slice of Life stuff.  Action, mecha and the like are less and less on my radar every day.  Profound stuff that digs into people and personalities though?  Those are things I dearly love to find.

Well, a few days ago I happened to be poking at my Kindle app, and it was suggesting a manga to me called "A Silent Voice".  I think I'd heard the name before, but hadn't really paid attention.  I looked at it, and thought it looked like it was worth taking a chance on.  Wow, am I glad I did.

What is it?  In short, it's the story of a group of elementary school classmates (I hesitate to use the word friends), and when they are slowly reunited many years later.  The perspective character is Shoya Ishida.  I don't want to spoil too much, but for him, the entire story is one of redemption from what he was in elementary school.

Why would he need redemption? The other main character is Shoko Nishimiya, a shy girl who is deaf.  In elementary school, she tried to go to the same school as Shoya and some others (who form most of the rest of the cast).  To be blunt about it, she got bullied, and pretty brutally at that.  The ringleader?  Shoya.

However, as things went, eventually the mob turned on Shoya as well, making him the next victim of their cruelty.

As you can imagine just from that short description, this can be a very hard manga to read at times, but it is well worth it.

As the story progresses, each of the characters needs to come to terms with what they have done, and really, with who they are.  It's messy, and in some cases, I honestly don't believe that the ending is very clean, but I see that as a good thing.  People are messy, they don't wrap up all their issues, and that's more than reflected here.

One of the things I really like in the story is that bullying is shown to be a street that goes in many directions.  Shoya was a bully, and then became the victim.  Others are shown to have participated because of their own issues in life.  None of that excuses what they did, but it does show a very real perspective.

I can speak to myself, having been on both ends of that spectrum.  I got the full bully routine for many years, in many places (courtesy of my parents moving a number of times when I was younger.)  Combine a speech impediment with the fine motor skills of a musk ox, and you can pretty much figure it out from there.

Yet, looking back at me in High School and (especially) college, I'd grown into being a downright mouthy and obnoxious jerk at times.  I thought I was being "funny", but saying things that were as hurtful as any of the stuff that had been said to me.  So yes, I can see aspects of myself in 3 of the characters in this story (I won't share which ones, you can guess.)

One of the strong themes in the story is set up by Shoko's mother.  When she saw Shoya again for the first time in many years, she reacted very badly, but she dropped the line "how can you give her back the years you took from her."

The simple truth is, when we hurt others, we can't "take it back".  The ways that Shoya's actions compounded Shoko's problems simply cannot be taken away.  That's a very real truism for us in life too.  We honestly cannot "make up" for what we've done.  Talk of "earning forgiveness" is always empty, because we can't somehow magically take away the pain that we cause.  However, we can start each day, looking to be better and different than we were the day before.  That doesn't "make up" for the past, but it does chart a new course.

I look forward to reading this one again.  I read it pretty quickly the first time, because the story was so compelling.  Now it's time to really go back, and read it to get all the nuance, and pick up on the foreshadowings that I had missed.

(Edited: There's also an anime feature I'm looking forward to seeing.  For some reason, I thought it had already been released on CR, but it's too recent for that.  Certainly goes to the top of the heap when it comes out on BR.)

I put this one in the must read category.