Who's Who In The CBU Update 2009
Who are... Park and Barb?
Barbara Lien-Cooper and Park Cooper, are the owners of Wicker Man Studios and of Gun Street Girl, its flagship project created by Barbara and artist Ryan Howe. Barbara has written for many websites, and served a one-year stint as Managing Editor of the multiple-Eisner-award-winning print magazine Comic Book Artist. Park is the Editor-in-Chief of indie comics company Septagon Studios, and of Comics Bulletin's sister-website MangaLife. Together, they also co-wrote the graphic novel Half Dead, published by Dabel Brothers Productions and Marvel Comics, and later picked up again by Desperado Publishing, and the New Media project The Hidden for manga publisher Tokyopop. They both also adapt manga and edit manga and comics for various companies.
Hop On Board The Manga Train, Installment Two: The Anime Car
By Park Cooper
Last time, I started talking about manga suggestions for those who find themselves saying: "I'm tired of not being on the bandwagon on this manga thing. Everyone else talks about how great it is, and I'm reading the same superhero comics with the same basic characters (or ripoffs of the old characters) that I've read for years. What manga should I start reading?"
I started this list, which I'll now finish:
Manga you might want to go out and buy Right Now:
THOSE WHO HUNT ELVES: Published by ADV manga. Those Who Hunt Elves is silly fantasy fun. It's not quite as intellectually silly as, say, Terry Pratchett's Discworld, but it's up there. The high concept is that a magical spell in a fantasy world summons some movie people from modern Tokyo: an actress (an incredible actress, she's great with disguises and telling when people are lying [or 'acting' like someone other than their true selves], a very strong and tough stuntman, a girl who's an expert in special effects and therefore explosives, and a tank that she was in charge of on the set of the movie, which is later possessed by the ghost of a cat. To get back, they have to find 5 mystical sigils/tattoolike marks that have scattered around the world and landed somewhere on the bodies of elves. So, our band of heroes and their sorcerous friend travel around... and now we finally get to it -- that's right -- stripping elves, which of course are always hot chicks with pointy manga elf ears, leading to the series getting the first of the alternative names by which Barb and I refer to it, Those Who Strip Elves (aka Those Who Shun Elves). Those Who Hunt Elves is really fun and often makes fun of a lot of fantasy cliches, like, if these humans from modern Tokyo are in this fantasy world, how do they survive without toilet paper? Answer: they actually find a source of it -- but when they find out how it's made, it blows their minds...
TUXEDO GEN: Okay, men, bear with me. What can I say about Tuxedo Gen? If you walked up to it with no knowledge, you'd say, "this is about a cute penguin. This is not for me." Unless you like Cute Penguin comics. But listen to the premise. There's a guy, a boxer-in-training, who's into motorcycles, and also has a crush on this girl he just met. However, he dies. HOWEVER, it's not really his time yet. That's right, we rip off HERE COMES MR. JORDAN/HEAVEN CAN WAIT, even more than YU YU HAKUSHO does. The guy's guardian angel, embarrassed at this turn of events, puts our hero into a penguin, who goes and gets adopted as a pet by the girl he likes. And, of course, since in Japan it's handy to sort of shower sitting down, when it's bathtime for her new penguin, it's bathtime for her, too. You can see how our hero would go along with such an otherwise ridiculous concept... So, Gen the Penguin enjoys bathtime and being a cuddle-object at bedtime, eats lots of seafood from the girl's dad's seafood restauraunt, does tricks in front of the place to bring in customers, and protects the girl with his own brand of penguin-boxing-fu. Gen waits for his penguin incarnation to die of natural causes, and in the meantime, he hangs out with his friend Mike the Genius Penguin, the world's smartest non-reincarnated penguin (not saying all that much), the boss (when Gen's not around) of all the penguins at the local aquarium. It sounds insane that a manly geek like you or me would like this manga, sure, but as I look to my right at one of our bookshelves, 10 volumes of Tuxedo Gen stare back at me, and we just bought the end. Yes, unlike GTO's commitment of 25 volumes, Tuxedo Gen stops at 15. Look, guys, just buy one and leave it around for your girlfriend to find -- if Tuxedo Gen doesn't get YOU into MANGA, at least it might get your girlfriend into some form of comics. Build a bridge in your relationship that will lead you both into the 21st century. TUXEDO GEN is published by Viz.
OTHELLO: Othello isn't a laugh riot, and it isn't deep and soulful, but tries for a middle ground between the two. Othello is light and puffy, a pleasant, shallow, light reading experience. Yaya is a shy and timid girl, teased by others, who walk all over her. If it wasn't for her secret life cosplaying with other gothy cosplayers, she'd crack. ...And then, one day, she cracks anyway. In a typical Jeckyl-and-Hyde fashion (but fairly harmless), one day Yaya finds the sort of Sailor Moon compact-mirror she had when she was a little girl. Ah, she loved that show, where a normal girl looked into her magic mirror and transformed into a superheroine, fighting evil and dispensing justice. And then a funny thing happens to Yaya... 16 years of sublimated taking-crap-from-people boils over and Yaya gets a second personality-- Nana, who is bold, loud, brash, and likes to smack rude, pushy people upside the head and look hot doing it. The difference in personalities is so different, it's 3 or 4 volumes before anyone can quite believe that Yaya and Nana might be the same person. So every so often, someone is mean to Yaya, who soon sees her reflection or hits her head or passes out, and next thing you know, Nana is making mean people look stupid and shouting "Justice is done!" and posing triumphantly. An interesting take on how someone fixated on superheroes could sort of embody them in real life... but the saving grace about Othello is, it doesn't STAY a simple little formula book... Eventually, people start to realize Yaya and Nana are the same, starting with the guy they both like... but by volume four, we learn that the guy she likes is also secretly friends with the Glam-Hair-Goth rock star that Yaya used to idolize! Whom will she choose? Will Nana/Yaya actually get a singing career? And if so, will she go with her sweet boyfriend, or the hotter rock star that she used to moon over? Or will her two personalities have different ideas on the subject, since Nana is aware of Yaya, but not the other way around? And what will happen when Yaya DOES realize Nana's existence? Othello gives you JUST enough depth to keep you interested, and would be a good read for younger readers (junior high, say... who might not be able to keep up with the slightly more intense reading of a Kare Kano, for example). OTHELLO is published by Del Rey.
WHISTLE: Whistle is the third of the sports mangas I've tried. A small boy leaves a good school for a poorer one because he realizes the snooty kids and evil coach at the old school are never gonna let him off the bench and into the game. And being a sports manga, the protagonist is motivated by what's that thing again? That's right -- THE LOVE OF THE GAME. We see some neat characterization off the field, but the best is on the field. The best scene I've read yet is near the end of volume three, when we realize that although we'll have used up all our energy for a week, we're going to give absolutely all we've got to beat the other team, the snooty school that our hero and the team captain used to go to. Our team finds out that the coach of the other team is our team captain's sadistic-in-the-context-of-sports dad, who's embittered by his divorce. The whole team gets behind him -- this is a motivation they can respect! As our team of misfits and losers starts to get it together, there's a fantastic scene where, as each kid gets the ball, we explore WHY they're there in the first place -- one got tired of being made fun of as a fat kid, but the protagonist was the first one to have faith in him. One is doing it to rebel, because mom told him that he couldn't possibly have time for soccer, since all his time needed to be taken up with study. One remembers how his hard-working dad encouraged him to play sports if that's what he wanted, because he was pleased that his son was sticking to something for once. Each kid gets the ball, flashes back to THE LOVE OF THE GAME that's the first thing he's found that he can believe in in life, and practically breaks his own legs finding a way to pass the ball down the field to the next player, through a gauntlet of normally-far-superior players who are starting to remember THEIR old, lost LOVE OF THE GAME just by WATCHING these guys. It's truly inspiring and makes you realize HOW and WHY some kids (and some grown-ups) can care so much for a sport that it's all they think about. WHISTLE is truly a sports manga up there with the rest of the best. Published by Viz in conjuction with Shonen Jump.
Now then. Those were good manga. And as I've said, many manga have excellent anime to go along with them that you might want to try. However, sometimes it's good the other way around. Here's a partial list--
Manga you might want to get into by trying the anime first:
KARE KANO: Published by TokyoPop, Kare Kano is the best manga by an author who's not great at fast-paced stories that you'll ever see. But this also means that you might want to try the TOP-NOTCH anime first, to securely anchor your love of the characters. It'll work, since the series has truly FANTASTIC direction. You'll probably find the anime, however, under its Americanized title, HIS AND HER CIRCUMSTANCES. Basically, Boy meets Girl. Girl is perfect in every way, pretty, brilliant, kind... except it's all a front. She loves praise from others, so she puts on a false self in public. At home, she's a plain, vegetative slob... except when it's time to study, and study hard she does, so she can look like a genius in class the next day. Her secret is discovered by her male counterpart -- he's moral, a kendo champion, brilliant, fantastic-looking... and a little fake. When Boy finds out by accident that Girl isn't really Little Miss Perfect, he blackmails her into doing his homework and carrying his books... because he's got a crush on her, and this is the only way she'll spend time with such an embarrassing person who knows her secret. But this arrangement doesn't last long, as they mutually fall in love with each other as they get to know one another and start a romance. However, he's got a secret, too... a dark side that loves her, but is extremely self-destructive. Can her love, and the mutual friends they collect along the way, save him? If you don't mind a long-running, slowly-paced story, you'll really get into Kare Kano, and watching the anime is the best way to get hooked.
EXCEL SAGA: Published by Viz. Excel Saga is... truly weird. It's really rather amusing, in a very cerebral way. A girl becomes a member of ACROSS, a secret organization with less members than you have fingers on one hand, that's trying to take over the city, as a stepping-stone to taking over the world. Under the direction of leader Il Palazzo (all the members of ACROSS have code names based on Japanese hotel chains for some reason), Excel and her teammate Hyatt (Hyatt has an extremely poor constitution and falls into a coma almost every episode) set out to destroy the city. But will Il Palazzo's grasp exceed his sanity? Will Excel's crush on him ever manifest into any sign of affection aside from him pulling a rope that opens a trap door under her and dropping her down into miscellaneous traps? It's very worth it to watch. The anime is available from ADV Films.
Next time: More on this same list, such as AZUMANGA DAIOH, FRUITS BASKET, OH MY GODDESS, and RUROUNI KENSHIN...
http://www.panel2panel.com/gsg-archives.html
http://www.queeniechan.com