I always think that there are so many people I admire, people whom I would like to show my respect. MAL gives us space to mark a few anime/manga industry creators as your “favorite”. It never felt satisfying to me though. And anime and manga aren’t the only entertainment I like. There also books, music, YouTube creators and others.
On the other hand, I am not fond of lists. And things like “the…
Some time ago, I’ve read a short book, Jonathan Livingston Seagullby Richard Bach. The book tells a story about the titular seagull who loved flying. His attempts at learning more about flight lead him to great peaks of mastery, and at the same time alienated him from his family and his tribe. Through the book, Jonathan learns flight beyond physical limits of his body, meets other seagulls with…
As you probably know, Hunter x Hunter anime has ended a while ago, but the manga is still going. Right now, a new batch of chapters is being released, so maybe it is a good time to jump in! The current arc in the manga is referred to as “Succession War”, but it is a part of a bigger arc, with we usually call “Dark Continent”.
I am telling you this to make it clearer what I am going to be talking…
Some time ago, I started reading this romantic comedy manga about middle school students – Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san by Souichirou Yamamoto. You may have noticed its recent anime adaptation. It is a little weird that, even though I don’t read that much manga, it is the second time I start reading a series before it gets adopted into an anime.
But anyhow, my experience with Takagi-san is limited…
I thought it might be interesting to write a couple posts on my experience watching Monster. It is a 74 episodes long show, and I am sure my opinion will change a lot as I watch it. Some things will seem insignificant and some I will only notice in retrospect. So, it might be worthwhile to pause and write down what I feel about the show now, before the next episodes wash the feeling away.
This is going to be a bit of an unusual post. Normally we cover manga and anime, but this time it is a novel: Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky.
There are a couple reasons I want to write about it. First, unless you follow Russian sci-fi lit, the chances are you won’t even hear about this book. I might be underestimating its popularity, probably not though. Second, there are a few things to talk…
Remember Fairy Tail? The manga that once was considered a candidate to joint One Piece, Bleach and Naruto big trio? And now it ended, and so did Naruto and Bleach, and we are now old and… sorry, where was I? Oh yes, Fairy Tail. The author of this manga, Mashima Hiro, recently started a second project called Edens Zero. Let’s talk about it!
Edens Zero is a brand new manga that Mashima writes on his own, as far as I know. I am saying it to differentiate this manga from other follow projects associated with big name mangaka, such as Boruto or Dragon Ball Super. And, even though I obviously have no clue how long Edens Zero will run, so far it looks like it is aiming to be lengthy. The story already sets up the ground for multiple future arcs, so it could easily go to be a 100+ chapters long story. My point here is, you can think of it as of a new manga series, not as of a bonus for Fairy Tail fans.
Shiki
That said, Edens Zero doesn’t shy away from Mashima’s previous work. In fact, he boldly reuses the same character designs and even names. You can find a mascot cat named Happy, a girl who looks just like Lucy, a guy looking like something in between Grey and Natsu and so on. It is clearly an intentional gesture, and Mashima isn’t the first artist to re-use characters between unrelated works. Think of Osamu Tesuka and his reoccurring characters. I don’t see any problem with doing that, it makes the reading experience even better for me.
Now, if you want to see the manga without any further spoilers, pause here and go ahead and read the first chapter. It is worth it.
So, what is this manga about? Hard to say for sure. It is set in the post-modern age, with computers and robots. I would even say that it is set in the version of the future that people envisioned back in the 60s or something. It is an enthusiastic future, with only some elements of dystopia. The first protagonist of the series, Rebecca, is a “B-cuber” (sounds so silly ^^’), an equivalent of a youtuber basically. She befriends a guy named Shiki, and he becomes the second protagonist of the story.
I don’t want to recap all that happened in the manga already, I’ll just give you an example. In the first chapter, Rebecca visits a robot amusement park. She visits it to film a video for her channel, that is how she makes her living after all. She meets Shiki and he is this wild guy who grew up among robots and had hardly seen a real human. Next day she and Shiki are attacked by the robots, who claimed to have been affected by a virus. Shiki tried to defend Rebecca and eventually they have to run away. If you have read too much enough shonen, you can guess what really happened. These robots wanted to make Shiki leave the place so he could meet other humans and become something, do something with his life. They also knew that they didn’t have the capacity to exist for too much longer, the entire system of this amusement park was about to shut down, and they didn’t want the kid to see all of his friends become scrap metal.
And at the end of the chapter we learn that Rebecca didn’t just visit this place travelling some hundreds of kilometers, she flew in from space. In this world, people just travel with their personal spaceships, and that is a part of the settings.
Okay, so here are a few things that I think are good to notice. First, from the very first chapter we see the idea of robots and humans addressing their differences and similarities. This is a classic sci-fi topic and it is very rich in interesting ideas. And it lends itself to showcasing some of the basic human emotions, as can be seen from Osamu Tesuka’s Astroboy manga, for example.
Also, I feel like the first chapter was sort of a node towards Tesuka, who seemed to like these kinds of setups. There is even a chapter in Astroboy taking place in a robot amusement park, so. It is not just Tesuka though. I’ve also spotted a Captain Harlock reference in the following chapters and I think we will see more references after. I think Mashima wants to write a manga set in this world created by older mangaka and he gladly nodes to them whenever he can.
Hi no Tori?..
Now, why I decided to write about it (other than to have an excuse for posting nice drawings by Mashima). Reading this manga I wonder what is it that Mashima wants. Oh, put another way, I wonder if he knows what he is doing. And I mean it is a good way. I genuinely am curious how this thing will turned out. Why? There are few reasons.
For one, Mashima is a talented mangaka. He can come up with good bits and pieces for his stories. Yet he isn’t exactly a worship-worthy writer. Fairy Tail was so repetitive and full of writing hiccups that I dropped it (talking about the anime adaptation here). I’ve also tried reading the manga from random points and it never was a problem, the story is THAT simple. The whole magic system makes no sense, the predictability is over the roof, he could never kill a character or do anything to scare the reader, yet the manga is supposed to be all dramatic and high-stakes. So I wonder, did Mashima learn from that last attempt? Does he go into this new project with a better understanding of what he wants to do?
Unlike with Kubo (Bleach’s author), there is no reason to suspect that Mashima was just lazy about it (I might just not be aware of it though). Maybe he wrote himself into a corner or something? Also, writers do improve over time. I don’t expect Mashima to create an intellectual masterpiece or anything, but maybe it will be pretty good, who knows?
With this in mind, I am extra interested in seeing how the story goes. It is really fun to compare it with Fairy Tail too, in terms of the decisions Mashima makes. In Fairy Tail, Natsu was already a powerful and experienced fighter and Lucy was just tagging along. Natsu already had lots of friends and there already was a guild that we learned to care about, which provided a lot of material for the following story arcs. In Edens Zero, Rebecca has friends and connections, but she is not a fighter and she is not in any kind of top position. Shiki is a fighter, but he doesn’t know anyone. This allows the manga to split the attention between the two and it works pretty well in my opinion.
Oh, and instead of the stupid gag about Natsu’s motion sickness we have a gag about Shiki wanting to befriend everyone, which not quite as stupid.
Oh, who is that? Definitely a villain! Can’t imagine this one turning to the good side!
Also, I like that Rebecca is a video blogger. It is so much better than just an “adventurer” or a “mage”. Think of it, when was the last time a shonen hero had a proper profession? And no, ninja, hero, hunter, pokemon trainer and pirate aren’t proper professions either. Though I am currently reading a webtoon where one of the protagonists works as a school director, maybe I’ll write about it next time.
I am also interested to see how Mashima will handle battles in this manga. Fairy Tail wasn’t a great example of writing, as far as fights go (just my opinion) and I wonder if Mashima feels the same way too. I am sure he is not going to change his attitude towards killing characters, and I don’t expect him too, but then maybe he could try not to rely on overly dramatic situations that we all know won’t lead anywhere. Less fights and more humor? Less victories and defeats and more things that move the plot forward? I wonder.
Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough. If you want to see more of Mashima’s art, check out this manga. You don’t have to though, you probably won’t miss much. See you next time!
Edens Zero
Remember Fairy Tail? The manga that once was considered a candidate to joint One Piece, Bleach and Naruto big trio?
So, apparently there is this guy, Kunio Ajino, who worked as a manga assistant for Yoshihiro Togashi. Togashi is the author of Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho, one of my favorite manga writers and artists. And this Ajino guy draws a short manga about his work experience as an assistant back in the Yu Yu Hakusho days. I think the manga is called Sensei Hakusho, though I am not sure.
Recently my posts had been focused on writing devices, tropes, and even art style discussions. But you know, this is a blog, so I thought maybe I can also get away with just writing a few lines about manga I’ve been reading, including ones that aren’t really worthy of a recommendation or anything of the sort. And I read a lot of questionable quality manga, so.
So, continuing with the tropes. I decided to write this post because I happened to read two manga in parallel, both of which used this trope. What am I talking about? Let’s see, it usually goes as this:
The main character is a normal person, no obvious awesome powers. Then one day he meets a person (or a creature or some other kind of a sentient being) that offers him to sign a contract that will…
