Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Trailer!!

The trailer is finally out!!
Watch here.

I originally had my reservations about Cera as Scott, but he seems to fit the role, and the rest of the casting is too damn perfect to complain. And it reunites George Michael Bluth with Ann! The trailer focuses on the exes, so I hope the next trailer shows off Scott's friends and such. It's gonna be a great summer for Scott Pilgrim fans, especially since the final book is coming out a month before the movie.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...right?

There's been quite a hubbub in the Bleach fan community today over Incarnate, a comic book created by Nick Simmons (Gene Simmons' son). There's more than a striking resemblance between his comic and Bleach. There are some similarities to other manga, but Bleach seems to be the biggest victim. Here's a sample:

And there's much much more.
I remember seeing a preview of Incarnate several months ago, and while it wasn't that good, there was a definite Bleach and Hellsing influence. But at that point it stopped at "influence." Things have changed since then, it seems. While the story originated at the Gamefaqs forum, the epicenter seems to be at the LJ community, Bleachness, where comparison images kept coming in throughout the day. Also, for anyone following the Viz release, be warned there are spoilers for volumes that have yet to be released.

Viz has been notified, and apparently Kubo himself tweeted about all the American fans that were telling him about a "manga imitating Bleach." From the translated tweets I read, he seems less outraged, and more bemused.

It's a pretty messed up thing to do on many levels, but it's also plain ridiculous how it's SO obvious. If you're gonna do it, try a bit harder to cover your tracks or something! Murmurs of "he only has a comic book because of his dad" were bound to happen (like I said, his art wasn't that great), and now those murmurs have become shouts. A lot of fans are also mad because their are so many aspiring artists out there, and to them this is just a slap in the face. Why do something like this with a comic? I would think coming up with the shots and poses would be the fun of getting to do comics. What the heck?

Ultimo vs. Jumbor

Has a mangaka ever used the exact same story in two different series at the same time? If not, Hiroyuki Takei, you may be the first! Well, maybe not exactly. I'm exaggerating a bit, but it does seem that way with Ultimo and the reboot of Jumbor.

First a brief history lesson on Jumbor Barutronica, Juuki Ningen Jumbor, or just Jumbor, pronounced "yoombor": In 2007, a while after Shaman King was canceled, Takei started Jumbor in Weekly Jump, a series about a construction warrior (or something, I dunno) who died and was resurrected in a childlike robot body with mechanical hands and feet. There were construction robots, and everything down to their names followed that motif. It lasted 10 chapters, only filling out one volume. That's a really quick cancellation (even for Weekly Jump, who is notorious when it comes to cancellations), but not entirely shocking, since it's not uncommon for Jump mangaka to have a flop after a successful series (Watsuki with Gun Blaze West comes to mind). Anyway, that happened, and a few a years later they started releasing the Kanzenban edition of Shaman King, which would have a new ending with the final volume. Then Ultimo started in Jump SQ, and about 2 months ago, Takei did a Jumbor one shot for Ultra Jump which takes place 300ish years after the last chapter. And it was recently announced that Jumbor would start serialization in the next issue of Ultra Jump.

I never read the series, but as I've been really into Ultimo lately (I'm enjoying it much more than I originally thought I would), and with the news of Jumbor returning, I was curious and decided to take a look at the one shot. It was fun, but that's not what I wanted to bring up. What really struck me was the similarity to Ultimo. Not the series itself, but the character.
Ultimo is a robot boy with transforming hands, rocket legs, and shades attached to his head. All the "doji" in the series are. In Jumbor, the main character is a robot boy with transforming hands, rocket legs, and shades attached to his head.
Actually, he looks a bit more like Vice (from Ultimo) with the dark hair and bigger shades (even the shades follow the construction theme!). He looks rad. That's the most appropriate word, I think. Rad!

Need to see how similar they are? Here's the both of them attacking.
Jumbor:
Ultimo:
(I flipped the images. Both were originally facing downward.) It's almost the same panel! Even the same arm is doing the punching. The biggest difference is that Jumbor's transformations have a more nuts and bolts mechanical look, whereas Ultimo's transformations are more sleek. And of course, Jumbor has the construction motif going on, while everything in Ultimo has a kabuki touch to it.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, it's just interesting and really stood out to me. Like I said, Ultimo has been very enjoyable, and the one shot of Jumbor was cool enough that I'd read it if were to come out here.
As to why they have this similarity, I think after the original Jumbor was canceled Takei was still really into this idea, so when his next project came along (Ultimo), he still wanted to use some of the ideas he had for Jumbor, so he just ran with Stan Lee's concept and inserted some Jumbor into it. I guess either the free time he got from doing a monthly series, or the success of Ultimo (I don't know how successful it's been, actually), or both, allowed him to do another series, so he decided to go back to Jumbor. It would be funny if Ultimo made a cameo in Jumbor, or vice versa.

Gottsuu-iiyan at The Eastern Edge has been talking about monthly schedules vs. weekly schedules lately (in favor of monthly) and mentioned how Takei was pleased with the monthly format and how it allowed him to put more effort into every panel. I think Jumbor coming back is a sign of how beneficial the extra time of a monthly schedule can be. I think it's great that he's been able to pursue a pet project that he obviously cares about. There's been something of a small trend lately of old series returning, with Jumbor, Yami no Matsuei (Descendants of Darkness), and Togari, all of which seemed unlikely to return. It's a nice bit of hope for manga that were cut short too soon.

Radical Astro Boy/Tezuka music video!

I stumbled upon a neat music video full of Tezuka characters raving, and Astro Boy undergoing some sort of transformation at the hands of Black Jack! It's done in the style of the 2003 Astro Boy series. It's pretty cool. A bit old (2008), but pretty cool.

The song is from a group, or "supergroup," if you will, called Ravex.

"Spearheaded by Shinichi Osawa (Mondo Grosso), Tomoyuki Tanaka (Fantastic Plastic Machine), and Taku Takahashi (m-flo), ravex is a special crossover project group formed in 2008 to celebrate music label avex's 20th anniversary and manga legend Osamu Tezuka's 80th anniversary. The electronic trio collaborate with various avex artists for their music, and Tezuka Productions contributes character artwork and animation to the project."

Cat Paradise vol.2

There's totally a T-Rex in this volume!

In this volume, several demon animal things infiltrate the school by possessing the bodies of students, and most of this volume involves Yumi and two of the student council members trapped in the library without their cats (thus, unable to fight) with a girl possessed by a spider demon. Outside of the library, Kansuke encounters an enemy as well (a werewolf-ish fellow) before trying to go after Yumi.

It's about as enjoyable as the first volume. With introductions out of the way, it's right down to business, and the business with the spider girl ends up taking the whole volume. The one thing that bugged me about the first volume is that they dropped this whole team on us, the student council, but we didn't really get to know them that much. But judging from the last story in the first volume, which focused on Kotori, and this volume, which focused on Akifuji and Tsukasa, we'll learn more about them and their powers as they each get their turn at bat. But until then, they're kind of just background people. By the end of the second volume, there should have been decent screentime for the whole group, but there wasn't, really.

But, this volume is still a good time. Even without their powers (until later in the volume), the action is still pretty suspenseful. I could see Tsukasa's power coming from a mile away because of something that happens early on, but I wasn't quite expecting it to manifest in the way it did. I loved that the characters' reactions were exactly the same as mine when the T-Rex appeared; I said "What the hell?" and then saw the spider was saying it too...it made me laugh. So that was fun. The new characters, the group of possessed students, are an interesting addition as a sort of rival group to the heroes. Each one is a different animal (spider, wolf, snake, etc.).

The art is as solid as last time, with some cool action shots throughout. I want to see more of the cast in the next volume, and also hope they don't spend the entire next volume on one enemy. Not there's anything wrong with that, just that there's only three volumes left!

Cat Paradise vol.1

I've never read any of Yuji Iwahara's work before Cat Paradise, but I'd heard nothing but good things. While his past stories seemed to be a bit dark, this is straight up action/adventure fun.
Yumi is a new student at Matabi Academy, and like many other students, her main reason for going to this school is that they allow cats on campus. We soon find out that a demon cat is sealed somewhere on the school grounds, and that the student council and their cats watch over it. Yumi and her cat, Kansuke, soon encounter a demon and gain their own power similar to the student council members'.

There's well tread ground here, but Iwahara obviously knows it. In the author's comment section, he says he was aiming for creating something that felt like an anime, and I'd say he hit his mark. Ancient sealed demons, students fighting monsters, a mysterious student council, seven "chosen" kids, etc.; it's all fairly common for anime. The twist in this scenario is the fixation on cats. Each student/cat pair has a unique power based on some aspect of their personality (Yumi creates costumes for Kansuke which turn him into a humanoid cat person). Their powers also allow them to communicate with cats. There are plenty of pet owners who dress up their pets, and Yumi is no expection, so when Kansuke finally gets to talk with her, it's funny to finally see an animal get to complain about being forced to wear clothes. In addition to Yumi, we get to see one other student council member's power in this volume.

There's a kind of silliness to the story's underlying premise, but that's what makes it fun. The other thing that make this series worth reading is the art. His art actually reminds of Eiichiro Oda's (One Piece), not in his character designs (they're nothing alike), but in the thickness of the linework, and the way that he uses parallel lines for shading instead of screentoning. Except in Iwahara's case the shading sometimes stands out a bit too much, and can look a little weird. Here ,for instance, Yumi's tongue and neck just seem a bit odd (click to enlarge):


Otherwise, I really like his style. I'm no cat expert, but it seems Iwahara put in the effort to make the cat's breeds all look distinct and like real cats...or as real as is art style would allow. There's also a touch of Disney to the way he draws the cats, but maybe that's just me. I loved this small little gag where they're in a library and Kansuke has the sudden urge to scratch a book for no other reason than the fact that he's a cat. The way he looks at Yumi as he's about to do it is just cute. It's something a real cat would do:


This manga is fun in the way something like Digimon is. You know it's silly, but you can't help but get wrapped up in it. Your mileage may vary, but I'm looking forward to more. And if you want your shonen fix, at 5 volumes, this is a good alternative to other, more epically-sized series.

Japan makes Twilight cool!

I am neither condemning nor praising Twilight. (Never read the books, but saw the first movie and I didn't hate it entirely. I'm more of a Harry Potter man.) Moving on. I wanted to share something cool. I saw these a while ago, but I was reminded of them with the recent hubbub over New Moon.


The books probably aren't my kinda thing, but if I saw these, even I would take a second look:

More appealing than apples and chess pieces? The Japanese release of the novels were given a manga makeover, at least on the outside (the inside is just Twilight in Japanese). To be clear, these aren't manga, just the covers given to the novels in Japan. You'll notice that one of the books is listed as number "13". I'm almost certain there aren't that many novels in the series. It's common for novels in Japan to be released in parts, so for example, the first Twilight book might be divided into 2 or 3 individual volumes. I don't know why that is. Maybe Japanese text takes more page space? Also, I'm not sure how common it is for foreign novels to be given manga-like covers. Maybe they're marketing this to the light novel crowd? I dunno.



I really like the style. It makes it look like a hip shojo manga. I prefer this to mopey K. Stew and R. Pats (let's just ignore the fact that I called them that). The artwork is done by mangaka Ryuuji Gotsubo, whose soccer manga, Sasameke, will be released by Yen Press in just a few months. So if you like what you see here...check out Sasameke! And while we're on the subject of Yen Press, they're releasing a Twilight manhwa.

If you wanna see the rest of the covers just search "トワイライト" on amazon.co.jp Rest assured, they all feature Edward-san and Bella-chan dressed stylishly while practicing abstinence. In conclusion: manga makes everything slightly better.

Oh god, I just made a Twilight post.