Moments of Oda Madness: One Piece and Drag Queens?

One Piece is a manga in which the character drama and the world itself – a fantastical place where adventure doesn’t so much find the characters as get in their faces and rough them up a bit – is impossibly larger than life. Even after you figure out the basic storytelling formula (get to an island, fight successively harder enemies, move on) it’s still impossible to guess just what is going to happen next.

This is because Eiichiro Oda is extremely creative and not at all above throwing the readers for a loop. Take for example what I like to call Moments of Oda Madness. You’ll know a MOM when you see it because it will make you stop reading, slap your hand to your forehead and shout aloud “Dammit, Oda, you mad genius!”. You’ll probably then wonder what he’s smoking and where you can get some.

Take for example in the Alabasta arc when Usopp and Chopper fight against two of evil Sir Crocodile’s agents: Mr. 4 and his partner Miss Merry Christmas. Miss Merry Christmas once ate a devil fruit which turned her into a mole human and so, since they’re out in the desert, she starts burying herself in the sand to attack from below. At this point Usopp whips out one of his weapons – a giant hammer – and starts doing this:

20th Century Boys Is Just like Rock n Roll

Hey, remember the turn of the century? New Years Eve, 2000. I was only 11 at the time and I remember being glued to the TV, waiting anxiously for the clock to strike midnight at the first place in the world. Waiting to see if the Y2K bug – which was probably some kind of computer problem but could just have easily been an enormous rampaging alien bug – would bring about the end of the world. Or if the bug didn’t show, maybe a giant robot would destroy us all instead… hey, it was a new millennium. Anything could’ve happened.

So what if it had? Who could have fought to save humanity?

NANA Rocks – This is How You Do Drama

It’s been nearly three weeks since I posted here. I wanted to take a break over the holidays, not only from writing about anime/manga but from reading and watching it too. Of course being the addict that I am, I couldn’t entirely stop myself from indulging.

One thing I have been reading is NANA which is so addicting that I couldn’t help going beyond Viz’s volume 13 and catching up to the latest chapter in Japan which is at about volume 20 (I will of course still be buying it in English as it comes out). In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have read all seven volumes in one day but let me tell you – it was a glorious ride. When it was all over the only thing to do was put on some black eyeliner and a leather jacket, light a cigarette and moodily strum my guitar in the rain… and by rain I mean sun because it never rains here and by leather jacket I mean t-shirt. Never mind that I don’t smoke either, it’s the thought that counts.

In all seriousness, though, what NANA does really well is angst. That seems like a negative word nowadays, perhaps because it conjures up images of Youtube video bloggers reading poetry about how at 15 years old it’s already too late to live. Trust me, NANA is nothing like that. A better comparison would be to teen television dramas in the way that all the characters’ relationships, break-ups and feelings are so incredibly dramatic. As if their entire lives are hanging in the balance. Yet where these shows often become nearly indistinguishable from soap operas, NANA always remains classy. 

But I may be getting ahead of myself here. If you haven’t heard of it, NANA is a shoujo manga by Paradise Kiss author Ai Yazawa. It revolves around two girls named Nana who happen to meet on a train ride to Tokyo. One is Nana Komatsu, a flighty and quick to fall in love girl who is moving to Tokyo to be with her boyfriend. The other is the tough Nana Osaki, a singer who wants to make it big with her punk band Black Stones or BLAST for short. The two end up sharing an apartment and living together in room 707 (“nana” means “seven” in Japanese).

NANA is the story of the Nana’s close friendship, of the increasingly convoluted relationship between BLAST and their rival band Trapnest and of both bands’ musical careers and ambitions. In the hands of a less skilled author the story of young people becoming big rock stars could easily be cliché and unbelievable. It works here because Yazawa creates complicated, three-dimensional characters. It’s not hard to really care about them even when, or maybe because, they show their weaknesses to the reader. 

I mentioned earlier that the character’s have a lot of angst. Well, there’s certainly humor as well but NANA is best when it’s tugging at the heart strings. Such as whenever one of the Nanas narrates the beginning or end of a chapter it often hints at something tragic that will occur in the future. This lends a bittersweet feeling and a sense of transience to everything, as if the characters are fragile and may very well break in an instant. In essence, NANA is beautiful people in beautifully heartbreaking and sometimes heartwarming situations. And I can’t get enough.

For more on NANA, I recommend reading Melinda’s excellent post: Why you should read NANA.

Shounen Jump Special – Letter Bee

This year is Weekly Shounen Jump’s 40th anniversary and as part of the celebration new episodes were animated for three of its series: One Piece, Letter Bee and Dragon Ball. These episodes are now up on Jump’s site where they can be watched subtitled and for free until January 31.

To watch them you need to download a media player which unfortunately only works for Windows XP or Vista. As a Mac user I was really bummed about this until I found I could download them from the usual place. I’m going to be doing separate entries for each one, starting with Letter Bee.

Bugs in his eyeballs or why I will never eat again

Thanks to The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service volume 4 I am probably going to starve to death. Why? Because I have been put off from food forever… or at least until I learn how to block my mind of unpleasant memories.

You see, TKCDS is a horror manga not because it’s scary but because it does it’s best to gross the reader out. It usually attempts this through perversions of the human body: mangled corpses, bloody stumps, heads in bags, that sort of thing. All of which I can handle with ease.

What I can not handle is pulsating, wriggling snail parasites POPPING OUT OF PEOPLE’S EYEBALLS while they’re still alive. But words cannot do this page justice, you must see it for yourself.

Lady Snowblood – if she sees your xxxx you’re dead already

In the Meiji era a kimono-clad woman enters a brothel. Hanging on the wall is, get this, an altar enshrining two penis-shaped ornaments. The woman speaks with the brothel’s owner who wishes to hire her to kill his business rival. She demands an extraordinary sum of money in advance and the man balks. With lightning speed she grabs a pair of fire pokers and, without even glancing behind her, hurls one over each shoulder. They zip through the air and pierce the penis ornaments straight through, causing them to tumble to the ground in front of the horrified man. Naturally he pays up.

This is how Lady Snowblood begins and it’s only a small taste of what’s to come. If you’ve ever heard of Lone Wolf and Cub you may be under the impression that Kazuo Koike is some kind of well-respected writer of historical manga. Perhaps you’ve heard that his work has influenced the likes of Frank Miller or that famous graduates from his program for aspiring mangaka include Tetsuo Hara (Fist of the North Star) and Rumiko Takahashi (Ranma 1/2). This is all true. Yet what nobody bothered to tell you is that Koike writes pulpy manga full of sex, violence and more sex with historical accuracy mixed in just to make you feel like this could be educational if you weren’t so distracted by the blood and tits.

The premise of Lady Snowblood is simple. Oyuki, which comes from “yuki” the Japanese word for snow, is out for revenge. Her sole purpose in life is to utterly destroy the three people who took part in killing her family and raping her mother. Ever since infancy she has been primed for this task and now she is a master assassin who takes on jobs while slowly tracking down her real targets. Oyuki is beautiful, heartless and extremely cunning. She’s been to hell and back; she’s the kind of woman you don’t want to cross. Ever.

Gurren Lagann School Version – moe… the burning kind?

What do you get when you combine a man’s burning passion with girls in sailor uniforms? No, it’s not whatever sick thought you just had. It’s the first chapter of Gurren Lagann Gakuen Hen, the Gurren Lagann spin-off manga which drops the characters in an alternate high school setting.

It starts off as a normal school day for Simon, or at least as normal as things can get around a guy like Kamina who is still intent on breaking through anything standing in his way…

Toto! The Wonderful Adventure Vol 1 Review

 

“Do you know how to learn the ways of the world? There’s only one way. Go on an adventure!”

I’ll Slice You With My Hat

I finally started reading Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure and it is awesome. More on that later. In the meantime, deadly fashion.

Gurren Lagann High School Manga – Oh, Gainax

For those of us wondering when Gainax was going to get serious about milking Gurren Lagann for all it’s worth, never fear! They’re already on the ball. 

Gurren Gakuen-Hen (Gurren School Edition) will begin serializing In the next issue of Monthly Comp Ace. The mangaka is Kabao Kikkawa and it’s based on a story by A-ji Zaitsu. Kikkawa mainly does hentai and ecchi so I guess that means lots of Yoko and Nia panty shots. 

I want to say that this news infuriates me and makes me want to send Anno – I mean, Gainax – death threats but that would be an enormous lie. If this is half as funny as the Otoko Ippiki Drama CD, which was also a Gurren Lagann high school alternate universe, I’m all in. 

It makes me wonder, though. Gainax co-founder Hiroyuki Yamaga has already said that he wants to work on Gurren Lagann for the next ten years. But if they’re already getting Campus Lagann out of the way, what’s next? Gurren Lagann Wild Wild West? Gurren Lagann: A Victorian Romance? Under the Sea Gender-swappin’ Lagann?

The sad thing is, no matter what they churn out it’s too late for me. I’m a sucker who will kick reason to the curb and buy anything as long as it has Gurren Lagann on it. Because that’s what being a fan with a blazing heart and unyielding bad judgement is all about!