Category Archives: Review

Crudely Animated Cartoons About Washing Your Balls: Thermae Romae

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Follow the world of manga long enough and you’ll start to hear about titles purely on the basis of how outlandish their premises are. For example, Saint Young Men, a story about Jesus and Buddha vacationing together in Tokyo. Or Blaster Knuckle (reviewed here), where a black cowboy hunts the monstrous vampire beasts that run the Ku Klux Klan.

Thermae Romae is one of those kinds of manga. Ongoing since 2008, it’s about an ancient Roman named Lucius who’s inconveniently transported back and forth from modern-day Japan, where he learns about Japan’s rich culture of bathhouses and bathing, and seeks to incorporate some of that culture back home.

A few weeks ago, Thermae Romae was finally turned into an anime, albeit in an unconventional format. Thermae Romae is a no-frills production running only three episodes long. It’s about as barebones as animation can get, having the appearance of a Flash cartoon, and a rapidly put together one at that.

But I dig it!

In Thermae Romae, Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries plays as Lucius realizes he has diarrhea and can’t find a toilet. Shortly after, you witness the ecstasy he feels at experiencing a bidet for the very first time. A supporting character is the spitting image of Steve Buscemi for no clear reason. It’s an anime both restrained and indulgent in its execution. Never graphic, but frequently juvenile. People will say it has a limited bag of tricks, and they get tired quickly. I say there’s not enough time in these episodes for that to happen, and if you want to talk about exhausted bags of tricks, look no further than the rest of the anime airing in Japan right now.

Also, that’s definitely NOT Golgo 13.

Thermae Romae is only made up of six twelve-minute segments, so there isn’t much more I can tell you without spoiling the entire thing. Entertaining as it may be, it feels less like an adaptation and more like a preview of the manga version, similar to the Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku anime. But we’ll save that discussion for another day.

North American Fantasy Comics That Will Rock Your World: Orc Stain

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If there’s a trap that ought to be maligned more in American comics, it’s the bait-and-switch cover. I know it’s good business sense to make covers the most attractive part of your comic, but all too often shitty books are graced with the shiniest exteriors.

A few months ago I read the first few issues of The New 52 Deathstroke purely on the basis of Simon Bisley’s amazing cover art. Eventually my enthusiasm for the covers was outpaced by my disappointment in the book’s writing, and I had to tap out.

It happens in every genre, including fantasy comics. Some of those covers look stunning, going so far as to incorporate Frank Frazetta paintings, but you’d be hard pressed to say anything nice about the art or stories contained within.

These sorts of infractions are why I neglected Orc Stain for so long. The seemingly universal abundance of terrible fantasy comics caused me to ignore what looked like something potentially interesting. I’m glad to have dug deeper, because this book turned out to be great.

The excellent coloring of Orc Stain is what initially caught my attention. It posesses a masterful palette of purple, green and red gradients, which makes everything blend together cohesively, while also adding depth to the detailed and frenetic linework. Since comics began to be colored digitally, gradients this conspicuous have defiled what are often serviceable pencils and inks, a tell-tale sign of heavy handed colorists rushing to make their deadlines. Here, the coloring is nothing short of breathtaking, adding balance and actually elevating the already impressive line drawing. I wouldn’t be surprised if coloring is the most time-consuming part of creating Orc Stain.

Luckily, Orc Stain isn’t an exercise in style over substance. Its plot, which follows a thoughtful one-eyed orc trying to keep a low profile as an explosive paradigm shift overtakes society, is grounded in an unpredictable world filled with unusual beasts, weapons, and magic. Orcs are a race of obstinate, single-minded brutes, constantly engaged in fickle tribal warfare which accomplishes little. Most humorously, orc economics is based entirely around the gronch, the orc penis. It’s both amusing and disgusting to read about orc currency and how it’s generated. This is a book where you’re just as likely to turn the page to see what happens to the protagonist as you are to learn one of the weird quirks of the world he inhabits.

Great-looking book. Unique and compelling milieu. What’s the catch?

The closest thing to a catch is that it takes James Stokoe a long time to release each issue, because he writes, draws, inks and colors them himself. I don’t have a problem with this. In fact, I would embrace an alternative model of American comics closer to what you see in Europe, where 45-60 page chapters are released annually in high-quality hardcovers. There are talented comic book artists suited to the monthly format, but a lot aren’t. Put shortly, this book is worth the wait.

Okay, there’s one more catch, and I’m surprised I’d ever say it: this comic looks better digitally than in print. I have the Orc Stain trade paperback (which collects issues one through five), and Orc Stain #6, the most recent issue. Both are printed on an uncoated paper that greedily absorbs the rich tapestry of ink that makes up an issue of Orc Stain, reducing its contrast and vividity. Would it raise the price-point too high to print the comic on glossy paper? I can’t say.

I can tell you with confidence, however, that when you compare two-page spreads that run across both a comic book page and the inside back cover, it’s the half on the coated cover that looks best. The other side appears limp and demure by comparison. When you read the comic digitally, you don’t have this problem. It’s bright and beautiful, exploding off the screen. Good thing it’s available on comiXology for 2 bucks an issue.

Orc Stain is an artist’s compelling vision of brazen weirdness, a genuine labor of love carefully crafted. In North America, people deserve more credit for creating comics in this fashion.

Redline: Everything Will Be Different Now

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I don’t know what your favorite Rutger Hauer movie is. He’s made a few good ones. There’s always his iconic performance in Blade Runner. There’s also Split Second, a solid 1992 sci-fi flick that’s difficult to find on DVD. Not to mention his more recent starring role in Hobo with a Shotgun. But I’m here to talk about Redline, a 1997 sf thriller curiously available on Amazon Instant Video.

I think Rutger Hauer starred in a string of low-budget action movies in the nineties because he was having a midlife crisis. There is one major aspect of this movie that would appeal to an actor struggling with his own virility: breasts. Pert, young, natural, communist breasts. The kind you don’t see in movies anymore. The kind that make life worth living. In Redline, Rutger Hauer gets to make out with naked Russian chicks a lot, and even gets into a fight with one.

This movie is so low rent that Mark freaking Dacascos is the costar. If you don’t know who Mark is, I have four words for you: Kickboxer 5: The Redemption. That didn’t work? Okay, he played the titular Crying Freeman in a live action adaptation of Kazuo Koike’s manga. In Redline, he plays a man who never wears a t-shirt.

Redline is a science fiction thriller about John Anderson Wade (Hauer), an American who smuggles futuristic tech into Russia, until he and his girlfriend are betrayed and shot dead by his partner, Merrick (Dacascos). Wade is reanimated using a weird kind of experimental technology that leaves him grappling with immense physical pain, and is quickly embroiled in a I-can’t-remember plot that involves the entire power structure of Russia.

I don’t know if it was Rutger Hauer’s presence or the desperation of my own mind trying to justify a terrible course of action, but I left this movie satisfied despite a laundry list of complications. I watched it via Amazon Instant Video, where it was in a 4:3 aspect ratio and the audio was maddeningly out of sync with the video. The biggest complication of all, however, is that this movie kind of blows.

MMA Manga Top Contenders: Shamo

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MMA Manga Top Contenders: a series of posts examining the world of Japanese mixed martial arts comics.

It’s no coincidence that familial pathos is a key element in MMA fiction. When you’re comfortable getting into a ring and punching someone who can expertly punch you back, it may be because you’re used to life being as much of an unforgiving exchange.

Shamo adheres to this narrative tendency, albeit in a dramatically heightened way.

Japan has a reputation for its academics being a rigorous pressure boiler that robs kids of their childhoods. Ryo Narushima knows it well. In this story he’s a bookish teenager serving time at a delinquent prison, because he went insane one day and murdered his parents. The details of his crime are left intentionally vague, as if the blind spot Ryo forever struggles with in his own head is shared by the readers, and by Japanese society at large.

In order to defend himself in juvenile hall, Ryo takes his martial arts classes very seriously. Thankfully his prison sentence isn’t long, and he enters back into civilization with fighting skills and a survivor instinct he didn’t have before.

You might imagine Ryo bleakly setting forth to reclaim a meager resemblance of his former life. That isn’t the case. Ryo starts out a lanky geek who made one big mistake, and over the course of this manga turns into a monster that doesn’t think twice about rape, murder, or selling his own body.

This one is for the ages, people. It’s an engrossing, repulsive tale about survival, which then becomes a story about a Machiavellian antagonist who is somehow the protagonist, all for the purpose of skewering our modern perceptions of success and achievement.

You may notice I’ve mentioned little about MMA in my review of this manga. Let me assure you, there’s no shortage of fights and brawls and tournaments. One of the first arcs in the series involves Ryo encountering a doppelganger version of himself, a champion boxer who seems to have it all. An obsessive fascination with this character leads Ryo down a disturbing series of events until he stars in a televised exhibition match with him. In preparation for this event Ryo becomes so engorged on steroids his heart almost explodes. But Ryo and the boxer’s rivalry doesn’t end with a simple boxing match.

Their final solemn encounter encompasses an entire volume of this manga and it’s so fucking brilliant, reading it bordered on a holy experience.

Shamo will probably never get licensed. The book would need to either be censored or sealed in order to be sold in bookstores, and the writer/artist team have no established place in the consciousness of American manga fans. I can’t imagine any North American publisher that would take the risk. Shamo has been published in countries more hospitable to a diverse perception of comics, like France, Spain, Germany and Italy, so I suppose it’s possible, I’m just not betting on it. Ironically, I bet it’s the nudity in this manga that would discourage a North American license the most, not the odious violence and rape.

Reading scanlations is an ethical quandary, and respect to wherever you stand on the topic, but I would have given up on this hobby a long time ago if the only avenue at my disposal was the domestic market. Stuff just gets so much better than that. And I’ve proven to be too dumb to learn Japanese, so I’m left telling you a manga I read by way of scanlations is not only a top MMA manga, but one of the best comics I’ve ever encountered.

PS: There was a live-action Chinese movie based on this manga made in 2008. It wasn’t very good.