Detrocboi is a thirty-page self-published booklet from an Italian freelance illustrator who goes by the same name. Meant to serve as both a portfolio of his talents and a comic in its own right, Detrocboi is divided into three parts.

The first fifteen pages form two full-color short stories about a fantasy heroine named Peqotl. Then there’s a black and white six-page short story where the same person transforms into an Ultraman-like character to battle monsters resembling those in the famed tokusatsu series. (This story is available in its entirety on Detrocboi’s blog, as is a lot of other terrific drawings of monsters and crystals and crystal monsters.) The final eight pages of the booklet are comprised of full-bleed reproductions of Detrocboi art prints.

There’s a pervasive Japanese influence in his work, but it also stands independently on its own, with fantasy elements clearly culled from the deep realms of Detrocboi’s imagination. There isn’t much left for me to say other than this a weird book that’s cool to look at. I hope Detrocboi does more sequential artwork, though his prints are interesting enough to stand by themselves.

Detrocboi is available for online purchase here. You should bookmark Detrocboi’s blog and give his older posts a look, where he posts sketches and reviews other artists that have influenced him.

2300 years ago China was divided into seven battling kingdoms. A monastic order known as the Men of Bokk, self-declared enemies of war, come to the defense of besieged cities. Using their battle skills and tactical brilliance, these men are a formidable force feared across the seven kingdoms, sworn to defend the defenseless.

But when a dumpy, bald man of Bokk comes to the small city of Ryo to defend it against an army of thousands all by himself, a series of events are put into motion that will impact China for centuries to come.

Bokko is stunning historical fiction, winning the 1994 Shogakukan Manga Award (I love a lot of what makes that list). It’s a sweeping adventure with a meticulous attention to detail that never gets tedious or confusing, even to someone who possesses little familiarity with ancient Chinese history, like myself.

Bokko was originally published in Big Comic, a seinen anthology most distinguishable for serializing Golgo 13 all these years. It’s adapted from a Japanese novel by a capable artist named Hideki Mori. Mori never fails to omit the requisite dirt and grime necessary for the time period, and renders his characters in a style that is reminiscent of nineties Ryoichi Ikegami, though his lines are yet to be as sure of themselves. Mori grows as an artist over the eleven volumes making up this series, incorporating more elaborate hatching and dynamic compositions to his work. It’s a similar trajectory to what you will find in Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Historie, another historical fiction manga: the artist’s basic style remains the same, but it’s used to better effect with each passing volume.

I’ve been in a bit of a manga slump recently, reading titles here and there because they were officially licensed in English, and getting bored as a result. Bokko is exactly what I needed to remind myself of how gripping manga can be. Even with an exceptionally interesting anime season (I’m watching two different shows! Two!!), comics still remain a more accessible and vital medium for me. But you should be aware–Bokko is only available in English scanlated from the French edition (of course it was published in France… a recurring theme you’ll find in a lot of the manga I talk about).

So there we have it, Bokko: historical fiction at its best, with a heartfelt anti-war message at its core. I found it impossible not to love.

The twelve-episode series (total run-time approximately 45 minutes) was originally animated in Flash and published on the web. In addition, a short series of 4-koma manga was published in Comic Bunch shortly before the magazine’s relaunch and departure of editor Nobuhiko Horie. A serialized DD Hokuto no Ken manga is now being published in Horie’s Comic Zenon.

The DD Hokuto no Ken anime will be available on the Comic Zenon web store, and goes on sale May 25th.

Tumblr is a place where the primacy of images is celebrated, more so than on Twitter and a lot like 4chan. But unlike 4chan, trolls don’t use Tumblr as a means of hiding in total anonymity.

The point of this post isn’t to talk about any of that mess. Nor is it to pimp my tumblelog, conveniently linked here so that theoretically someone interested in following it could do so with ease. No, I’d like to talk about a recent Tumblr phenomenon: people drawing their own interpretations of this well-known page of the 1972 Devilman manga.

Without context, the page comes across as stilted and baffling, the makings of something that could easily become an online meme. And fans know that, as it’s been circulated widely.

As far as I can tell, graphics artist Rachel Morris began the trend of recreating this page earlier this month. Due to the cyclical nature of Tumblr blogging/reblogging, it may have happened earlier.  If so, the current wave is nevertheless impressive. Here’s just some of the work that caught my eye (thumbnails link back to original artist pages):

So I guess Tumblr might end up being a pretty cool place, a place where Devilman is actively celebrated, among other things. It’s very strange for me to feel at home in a social networking site so soon after joining it, but it’s happening. This must be one of the signs of the apocalypse. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!

Another oft-circulated Devilman excerpt.

The Dark Horse Omnibus series handsomely collects comics in glossy, high-quality paperbacks, at about eighty percent of the original printing size. Looks great on a shelf, fits nicely in the hand. Overall a very classy product, clocking in at around 400 pages in this case.

The Age of Reptiles collection is interesting for a few reasons. One: it’s about dinosaurs. Two: there are no word balloons, nor is the book narrated in any way. Three: it’s resoundingly well-drawn and drafted, communicating a great deal of drama and action in its pages without the use of the written word.  Four: it collects three stories published over a sixteen year period, which allows one to observe the evolution Delgado’s drawing style, as well as changes in the coloring of western comics.

1. Tribal Warfare (1993)

In Tribal Warfare, Ricardo Delgado painstakingly renders his landscapes and dinosaurs with as much detail as possible, hatching and cross-hatching elaborate textures that emphasize the reptilian nature of these terrible lizards. It looks like a lot of work, but succeeds at breathing vicious life into the story he’s telling, which concerns an escalating vendetta between a pack of deinonychus and a tyrannosaurus rex.

The coloring is tacky and gauche, and I mean that positively. It looks terrific! Dinosaurs parade around in absurdly flat, bright and contrasting colors. I don’t know how much of the appeal is derived from the added visual interest this brings, and how much comes from the nostalgic resemblance to toys and other books depicting dinosaurs in the early nineties.

2. The Hunt (1997)

The Hunt is similar to its predecessor in all ways. Delgado’s drawing style works to depict lush landscapes and bumpy, scaly beasts. An allosaurus feuds with a pack of ceratosaurs and all sorts of wanton violence and destruction occurs.

The most interesting difference is the enhanced use of coloring. Now not only are the dinosaurs bright, but they also gleam, as the growing possibilities of digital coloring allow for highlights and dappled pigment which almost always serve to enhance the art because these effects conform closely to Delgado’s lines. In addition, there’s a part of the story which incorporates big splash panels of clouds, and it would have been nearly impossible to present in an interesting way without the enhancements made to comics coloring by this period of time.

Credit must go to colorist James Sinclair. There was a lot of awkwardly colored mess in this period of comics history, but Sinclair keeps his gradients at manageable levels, and pays close attention to the anatomy of the figures Delgado has laid out. The result isn’t flawless, but mostly works. In the above image, for example, you can see how the highlights on the red dinosaur call a little too much attention to themselves, and would have been better off reduced.

3. The Journey (2009)

We jump twelve years into the future, and see a radical change in Delgado’s style. His linework is softer and more whimsical. He’s totally abandoned the crosshatching technique, though he’ll occasionally invoke that focused attention to surface details which characterizes his earlier work for some of the close-up panels. His lines now have a rounded, topography-like look to them.

At the same time, the scale of his compositions has grown. Whereas in earlier work we might see thirty or so dinosaurs in a single page, now there are often over a hundred! It works well for the story, which deals with a massive migration of many dinosaur species and the resulting culture clashes.

The same way a brazen color palette is characteristic of nineties American comics, The Journey reflects the muted, earthy tones that often prevail these days. There’s no denying the story suffers for it. The dinosaurs blend into the parched milieu, and Delgado’s inspired landscapes are less vivid than they deserve to be. Overall the comic is still an impressive work of art, but comes across as a bit of a misstep in light of Delgado’s earlier pieces.

Don’t let my comments about the differences in the three stories fool you, this is a terrific collection of visual storytelling that I’m delighted to own. I’d highly recommend Age of Reptiles to anyone with even a passing interest in comics and dinosaurs.

1. It’s directed by Sayo Yamamoto (female anime directors are extremely rare), who previously directed Michiko to Hatchin.
2. Takeshi Koike (of REDLINE fame) did the character designs on it.
3. It looks amazing, incorporating that chalky line quality exemplified in 60s and 70s anime to great effect.
4. A female supporting character, Fujiko Mine, is actually the main focus of the show, not Lupin himself.
5. And…

We’re only three episodes in, but there’s a lot of frank Fujiko nudity and sexuality in this show. Frank nudity and sexuality occurs all the time in anime, especially in garbage shows I avoid because their facile titillation is so remarkably dumb/creepy/pedophilic it would kill whatever non-existent boner I’d theoretically be watching the anime for.

Fujiko Mine does it differently. The show is still trying to give me a boner (a task which, hotblooded male I may be, it fails at every week), but the quality of its eroticism is different. It’s more womanly and less childlike (read: less creepy). It approaches something you’d even dare to call eroticism in the first place.

The opening calls attention to the manner in which the creators of the show are setting out to do this: deliberately, up-front, and without detracting from the complexity of Fujiko Mine herself. The opening is also kind of brilliant, articulating the submissive/dominant parts of every person’s psyche that inevitably conflict as sexuality becomes one of the dominant forces in our lives.

However, I think the creators of this show are failing. Admirably, but still failing. Every time Fujiko expresses her sexuality to some end, the result is most often either abject failure or success despite herself. Yes, she is confident. Yes, she is brazen. But it seems mostly unwarranted and kind of humiliating. Like a broken superpower she’s too dumb to notice no longer works.

Honestly, the opening lyrics (surely intended to be Fujiko’s own inner monologue) are by far the most interesting thing about the entire show. We don’t really get any glimpse of who Fujiko might be outside of it. Three episodes in, and she would be entirely cardboard if it wasn’t for that opening. At the same time, the show is too smart for me to throw my hands in the air and write off its absurdities as par for the course.

So the profound inclusion of ecchi is the fifth interesting wheel on this anime. And I think there’s more room for it to be discussed. But not by me, because I find Fujiko Mine’s inclusion of nudity to be cloyingly deliberate and ineffective. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, but it does seem to cheapen a stylish product. And however uncool it makes me to point that out, I’m perfectly fine with it, because these are my reasoned reactions to watching the show with my full attention, an activity I plan to continue for all thirteen episodes, because it’s otherwise just that goddamned interesting. Call it a compromise between my dominant and submissive responses to less-than-perfect entertainment, if you will.

My total lack of funds forced me to abandon the idea of importing the books, but I resolved to not actually read through the scans, because I knew their low quality would take some of the magic out of it. Shortly afterwards I forgot about it altogether.

A few years later I’m an independent working adult (blech) and I randomly discover Heavy Metal has printed two Requiem collections. I read ‘em and love ‘em. So I pick up every other Olivier Ledroit comic available in English: Sha, another Pat Mills collaboration published by Heavy Metal, and Xoco: The Obsidian Butterfly, the first of a four chapter series only available in a Heavy Metal Magazine back issue.

My desire to import his exclusively French work only increased. One in particular hung over me perilously: the self-titled Olivier Ledroit, an enormous 300-page hardcover artbook. Not much information about it exists aside from a French-language amazon.fr review. I held off on purchasing it for a long time, reasoning I’d be better off getting comics and looking at those instead of an art book filled with behind the scenes info I couldn’t read. But I eventually relented, took a chance, and was rewarded.

Ledroit's early work on the dark fantasy comic Black Moon Chronicles (Chroniques de la Lune Noire).

Concept work Ledroit did for the Heroes of Might and Magic game series. Never played it, but I'm pretty sure the art is better.

My crappy scans don't do this book justice... imagine this image but 26 inches long and in amazing clarity.

Olivier Ledroit is entirely dual-language, with the French and English written side by side. And it neatly covers every major project Ledroit has undertaken in mostly chronological order, beginning with his pioneering work on the dark fantasy comic Black Moon Chronicles (1989), and ending most recently with the ongoing Requiem series. Every chapter is underwritten with commentary by the people he worked with, as well as Ledroit’s own thoughts. And gorgeous full-page illustrations.

Short of having all of his work published in English, it’s perfection.

If you’re a fan of Requiem on a visceral level, I’d highly recommend this book. It provides a thorough look at Olivier Ledroit’s variedness and evolution as an artist, including all of his comics work (tons of which hasn’t been published in English), his covers for Phillip K. Dick novels, a chapter on bugs and fairies (an area he’s not well-known for, perhaps explaining the uncharacteristic cover of the book itself), and a bunch of other stuff, including various paintings.

I’m telling you about this book out of an odd sense of duty… I don’t know how many people who don’t speak French are even aware of its existence, or the fact it’s written in English. Ledroit’s personal website doesn’t mention it at all (and looks like it’s from 1995.) I haven’t seen it anywhere other than Amazon and sites that aggregate book information by ISBN number.

I read volume one of Katsuya Terada’s fully painted manga The Monkey King shortly after it was published in 2005. I was a different person back then and the book didn’t leave a strong impression. When I heard a second volume was finally due this month (a seven-year hiatus!) I took note. The preview artwork made me wonder if perhaps I was in a place to better appreciate something like this, and it turns out I am!

The Monkey King takes its name and characters from the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, a frequent source of inspiration in Asian pop culture. For example, Dragonball was originally based on it. You probably knew that already.

Journey to the West is about a Buddhist priest’s quest to retrieve ancient scrolls from India, running into all sorts of demons and monsters along the way. He eventually allies with a powerful monkey and a hedonistic pig, as well as a man-eating demon and a god who takes the form of a horse.

Katsuya Terada is a Japanese artist whose most substantive credit to Western audiences is the character designs he provided for the 2000 anime Blood: The Last Vampire. His take on Journey consists of short bursts of story focused on the monkey character, in what I can only imagine are heavily remixed accounts of the original text, ramping up the violence, gore, and sexuality. I mean, the original novel may have had masturbation jokes in it, but I’m guessing not. Terada even transforms the main priest character into a sexy nun, for indecent reasons I won’t spoil.

Each story is unrelated to the other, and don’t seem to be assembled in any particular order. They’re totally Heavy Metal, in the Moebius/Arzach sense of the phrase. Because Journey to the West is a famous story Japanese people absorb naturally, there are details Terada leaves out which may baffle Western readers, details which probably should have been given more mention in the book’s supplementary notes.

I’ll mention them succinctly as possible: the monkey king is ridiculously overpowered. He can shapeshift, clone himself, and has immense physical strength and speed. He wields a heavy staff that can become longer or shorter at will, and rides a cloud. Before he is recruited along the priest’s journey, the monkey is punished by the gods for his pride and left trapped under a mountain. He is controlled by the priest character using a metal band held around his head which is able to magically contract, causing pain.

Knowing these things will make your reading experience of Monkey King flow better, as the events fit along a loose timeline, but aren’t always presented in order.

Volume two continues the pattern set out in the first volume admirably. The same unpredictable sense of imagination is applied, and the narrative is just as impulsive, to seemingly fit whatever Terada feels like drawing, such as the story of how the monkey king comes to own his magical staff. The book is filled to the brim with blood, violence and nudity, affectionately crafted in living color for your pleasure.

The plan seems to be that this manga will run for three volumes. But be warned: in Japan, there was actually a twelve year gap between volume one (1998) and volume two (2010). Remember what I said about the value of leisure in comics? I’d selfishly prefer if the artists themselves didn’t take it to heart.

Katsuya Terada’s The Monkey King Volume 2 hits stores April 18. Review copy provided by Dark Horse Comics.

Toki, as drawn by female mangaka Yuka Nagate for "Shirogane no Seija: Toki Gaiden."

As the Fist of the North Star: The Legends of the True Savior anime pentalogy was airing (2006-2008), Weekly Comic Bunch magazine printed a bunch of FotNS tie-in manga. The synchronicity makes sense: original FotNS editor Nobuhiko Horie was both running Coamix, the company that owned Comic Bunch, and North Stars Pictures, the company working on the new anime with TMS Entertainment.

While the new anime was well-received by fans, reception to the manga effort was mixed. Instead of mostly covering the events of the original series like the anime did, the manga consisted of sidestories about supporting characters. They weren’t directly drawn or written by the original team, either.

The most popular was a series about fan-favorite character Raoh, which would be adapted into its own thirteen-episode TV show: Legends of the Dark King: A Fist of the North Star Story. In addition, a six-volume manga about the supporting character Rei did reasonably well. There was also a one-shot chapter about Kenshiro’s adoptive father Ryuken, a one-volume manga about Kenshiro’s lover Yuria, and a two-volume series about Kenshiro’s scarred brother Jagi. I’d prefer not to talk about the awful Juuza series.

Juuza, what did they do to you???

There was also a Toki manga! Shirogane no Seija: Toki Gaiden lasted six volumes, and was the most similar to the original FotNS in style and spirit, for two reasons. First: of all the characters to have their own manga, Toki is closest in personality to Kenshiro. Second: Yuka Nagate’s drawing style, while not bearing an overwhelming similarity to Tetsuo Hara, captures a lot of his sentiment and aesthetic.

And his penchant for quasi-religious symbolism, though not in a vague tangential Evangelion sort of way.

Toki Gaiden is about Toki’s life after nuclear apocalypse but before he is rescued from prison by Kenshiro, a period not covered in the original story. While being adept in the Hokuto Shinken fighting style like his brothers Kenshiro and Raoh, Toki is also an expert at using it as a healing technique. In the nightmare of the post-apocalypse Toki has no shortage of work to do, with no shortage of villainous brutes getting in the way.

Toki encounters other Fist of the North Star characters over the course of this series, but these encounters aren’t forced and make perfect sense in the larger story, such as when he meets Amiba, a jealous foil turned impostor, and Juuza, a reticent ally who’s taken to skirt-chasing and boozing.

It’s decent comics, perfect reading to get yourself in the Easter spirit. The only bad news is The Gospel According to Toki is only available scanlated, and incompletely at that. But hardy souls dedicated to the eschatology of Fist of the North Star are working on it.

Please remember that this is a preview guide. It is designed to give you a taste of the first episode (or the first few episodes) of a show with a preliminary opinion and a few thoughts on whether or not the show has potential, because watching a show for twenty minutes and deciding for yourself would be ridiculous! These are not intended to be blanket judgments of these series as a whole. All reviews use the same ratings scale: 1-5, with 1 being the lowest. Because 1 is actually the lowest number in that set of numbers it makes perfect sense. You may wonder why I have to explain that, but I do. It’s important. Trust me.

Space Brothers
Rating: 2.32523461436 (of 5.0000000000)
Review:

So this anime is Planetes meets Gurren Lagann. On heroin. With a side of cheese. You’ve seen it before, so instead of a review, here is an arbitrary list of tropes I’ve culled from tvtropes.org: badass blink-meat puppet-interactive narrator-shoot the dog-alien sky.

Time will tell if this show ends up being good. Time, but not this preview guide, because I’m only doing one more episode review of this series tops. Seriously, I have more important shit to do. Like watch the first episode to crappy anime I know I won’t like, and write hilarious previews blasting them. It will be really funny.

Various Simon Bisley art. On the far left you have the cover he did for one of Verotik's horribly colored issues of the entirely skippable Shin Devilman manga. Seriously, that cover is the best thing to come out of any of that mess.

You’re probably familiar with “BIZ” even if you don’t know him by name: his style warps male and female figures alike into tight collections of tense muscles and corded waists obscured with very little clothing. His flair for enormous boobs, butts and biceps is only matched by his raw painting ability, which imposes upon these forms what I can only describe as “fleshy volume.” Don’t let the crudeness of some of these illustrations fool you, he’s an immense talent.

Bisley is from the United Kingdom, where he drew for the comics anthology 2000AD in his early career. Some of that material is newly available in the States, including ABC Warriors: The Black Hole, a terse sci-fi yarn about a bunch of robot losers tasked with saving the galaxy. Bisley’s black and white work can be just as compelling as his paintings, though it’s obvious in the weekly grind of 2000AD he preferred to sacrifice a bit of readability rather than omit a maddening barrage of detail.

Bisley hit it big in the United States with Lobo: The Last Czarnian (1990), a collaboration with Alan Grant and Keith Giffen that re-invisioned the DC Comics character Lobo as a heavy metal mass-murderer who both channelled and mocked the stylistic excesses of superhero comics at the same time. Bisley’s art could not be ignored and the series was a hit, leading to a role he plays to this day: making American comics appear much cooler than they actually are with badass painted covers.

One year before Lobo, back in the UK, Bisley painted the best selling 2000AD graphic novel of all time: Slaine: The Horned God. It features Pat Mill’s fantasy hero Slaine, an Irish take on Conan the Barbarian, in the original Robert E. Howard sense of the character. Slaine is an adventurer, but he is also stilled, unassuming, and reasoned. The book is really, really, ridiculously good-looking, and it’s infused with Pat Mill’s writing sensibilities: unrestrained in both violence and action, with a free-wheeling sense of humor no one could blame you for calling a little bit corny.

Most recently the Biz has been whittling away at a still-incomplete biblical art project, not for especially religious reasons, but because he wants to play with the power of those symbols in his work. He’s also involved in an upcoming series called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which sees him doing comic interiors at Heavy Metal for the first time in almost a decade.

I read the news of French artist/cartoonist/awesome guy Jean Giraud’s death as I browsed Twitter Saturday morning, between gulps of cheap, bitter coffee. The news chewed at my stomach, not because it was highly improbable or deafeningly tragic, but because in the last few weeks I’ve felt as if I was beginning to truly appreciate Jean Giraud (also known as Moebius and Gir) and his work.

It was inevitable among the Internet’s rush to memorialize that his life would be reduced to a few soundbites. They’re now ubiquitous. He’s the man who defined the look of Alien, Tron and Blade Runner (an overestimation, and slightly rude to the other visionary talent who worked on those movies, but fine. It’s not like Moebius’ greatest achievement was drawing for Hollywood, anyway.) He was besties with Hayao Miyazaki (fair enough, but this information says little about him, instead bridging a superficial gap to people disconnected from his work, similar to the way Brian fucking Bendis was selected to write the foreword to the US edition of The Incal.) You get the idea.

I’m not writing this for people who are intimately familiar with Jean Giraud and want to revel in his magnificence. I’m writing this for you, for people who know next to nothing about Moebius, and perhaps associate him with a certain kind of impenetrability complimented with an air of pretentiousness. Moebius comics are a real pain in the ass to find translated into English, often running for ludicrously high prices on the secondary market. And a lot of his later work still isn’t translated, so as far as I’m concerned, there aren’t a lot of English-speaking Moebius experts out there. It’s an almost tragic association we’re burdened with, because Moebius was as far from pretentious as someone of his repute could possibly get.

You Should Read The Incal

The Incal is a science fiction epic written between 1981 and 1989, available uncensored and most affordably from the UK. Written by the moderately insane Alejandro Jodorowsky, it’s everything science fiction should be: weird, exotic, unnerving, and psychological. And drawn by Moebius’ hand, it’s a work of art, gorgeously imbued with his masterful sense of atmosphere and space.

It is said Moebius is one of the few to bridge the gap between “art” and “comics.” If you accept the underlying pretension of that maxim, it’s true. Moebius can be as appreciated in the comic shop as he is in the museum gallery. Still, I find it most rewarding when his abilities are focused towards telling a story. Even if comics weren’t so looked down upon in the art world, the simple fact is most traditional artists could never draw good comics, because it takes too much work to do well. Moebius excelled at it, and he excels at it here.

The Incal is a sweeping futuristic adventure in which a strange artifact causes upheaval across the universe. A petty, whoring detective sporting 18th century European clothes named John DiFool  comes across the Incal shortly before creatures willing to kill for it come across him, and over the course of his tactical retreat he makes friends (a man with a wolf head, and a universe-feared assassin named The Metabaron, for example), and enemies (including a president with a penchant for cloning and body impermanence.)

The Incal is fun, unpredictable, and just plain weird, three things which you can say about comics with increasing rarity. And unfortunately, it’s meager taste of Moebius’ capabilities. Somewhere beyond tumblr posts, platitudes, and aged comic scans, Moebius the comic artist can be found in all his breadth and width. I hope American publishers realize we all deserve the privilege of knowing him and work out the logistical details necessary to get more of his material published over here.

The Yellow Sea (2010) falls into this category in spectacular fashion. Ku-Nam (Ha Jeong-woo) is a poor cab driver at the end of his rope. His wife left home to find work in another country, but he hasn’t heard from her in months. His mounting debts have forced him into gambling, which makes the situation worse. After watching Ku-Nam violently explode during a game of mahjong, crime boss  Myung-Ga (Kim Yoon-seok) offers to take care of his debts if he travels to South Korea and carries out a hit. Ku-Nam accepts, and that’s when things begin to go very badly for him and everyone else.

The Yellow Sea is the second film by director Na Hong-jin. His first, The Chaser (2008), features the same two actors, except Kim Yoon-seok plays the sympathetic lead. And like it, The Chaser is a savage, maddening thrill ride. Eom Joong-ho (Kim Yoon-seok) is a former cop who runs an escort service. Girls begin disappearing, and as Joong-ho investigates he discovers a serial killer (Ha Jeong-woo) has been kidnapping them. Even though he gets the serial killer to confess, he’s going to be released from the police station in twelve hours because of a lack of evidence and staff resources. So begins a night of hell for Joong-ho.

If you’re relatively new to South Korean cinema, I would recommend watching The Chaser first, for two reasons. One: The Yellow Sea features a controversial ending that some have interpreted as a giant middle finger to the audience. Two: The Yellow Sea runs about a half hour longer, and parts of it have confused the hell out of some people.

At the same time, I think I enjoyed The Yellow Sea more. It features spectacular fight scenes and foot chases, and Myung-Ga is a far more interesting, relatable, and quite frankly badass foil. I also enjoyed how it leisurely progresses from the story of a humble man trying to figure out the mechanics of committing a horrible crime into a frenetic blood-soaked mess. So watch whichever one you want. Or both.

This post is part of The 2012 Korean Cinema Blogathon, hosted by New Korean Cinema and cineAWESOME! Click here for more details. I’ve been a big fan of SK movies for the last 5-6 years, and I hope to cover more of them on the blog.

Osamu Tezuka was born on November 3, 1928 to a well-to-do family in Japan. Growing up he absolutely loved American animation, most notably Disney’s Bambi, a movie he reported obsessively watching in movie theaters. The fluidity of motion and character designs in these cartoons would influence Tezuka’s drawing style for the rest of his life. At seventeen he began publishing his own comics while enrolled in medical school, eventually deciding to do manga full time. Manga was nowhere near the robust market it is now, but that would change, owing to Tezuka’s own peculiar abilities.

Osamu Tezuka could crap manga out. It’s estimated Tezuka crapped out approximately 150,000 pages of manga in his lifetime. No one is sure how this was accomplished, but scientists theorize he subsisted entirely on a diet of India ink and paper pulp. The pulp/ink could theoretically travel through his digestive tract, resulting in reams of manga coming out when he pooped. Modern scientists are still trying to unlock the physiological mysteries of how this was done exactly.

Astro Boy (top) and Jetter Mars (bottom)

Tezuka could crap out stories, then crap out slightly different versions of those stories, and then crap out slightly different versions of his characters. Tezuka’s ability to crap is unmatched by any other manga artist, and indeed any being since the beginning of recorded human history.

His prodigious output, more than any other single factor, has shaped the existence of manga and anime as a pop culture phenomenon. Blog of the North Star salutes Osamu Tezuka, even if the grandiosity of his reputation in the West seems to have stifled the notoriety of other immensely talented manga luminaries, such as Shotaro Ishinomori, creator of Kamen Rider and Guinness World Record holder, among many other distinctions.

Disposable income and free time are a recipe for bad decisions.

A few weeks ago, after what felt like hours of listless eBay surfing, I picked up this Fist of the North Star bottle opener for ten bucks. As far as I can tell it’s official merchandise and not a bootleg. The packaging indicates it’s related to one of the many Fist of the North Star pachinko slot machine systems in Japan. Perhaps it’s a prize gamblers can exchange for their pachinko ball winnings. Or maybe I’m full of shit and it’s something else. In any case, I’m happy to have acquired it.

I recorded a video to demonstrate the Kenshiro battle cry the bottle opener makes when you try to open something. A bit of pressure is all it takes, but I was determined to cleanly open a bottle using what amounts to an awkward piece of plastic with a small metal lining. Doing this one-handed as I recorded with the other proved difficult. I was also inebriated. But fear not, I edited down the original video so it’s only ninety seconds long. Watch with the audio cranked for maximum impact!

It’s a tacky souvenir that looks more like a sex toy than a bottle opener and sounds more like an angry Shih Tzu than Kenshiro. All in all, a perfect piece of clutter.

Or so it appears. Having recently caught up to Viz’ release of the manga (both available in print and on vizmanga.com at five bucks a volume), I’m not here to try and sell you on Toriko. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great, but right now I’d like to record some of the more unexpected moments I’ve encountered so far. Toriko is peculiar, and maybe even a bit subversive.

It encourages alcoholism.

Japanese culture can be less strict than American, and the subject of alcohol is no exception. For example, the children’s cartoon Dragonball Z once featured an older character drinking beer, and the beer had to be chroma keyed into looking like water before it aired on television over here.

Toriko takes it a step further than that. Characters don’t simply drink beer (constantly). They invite the reader to do so as well, as in this celebratory splash page:

The target demographic for this manga is ten year-old boys. The drinking age in Japan is 20.

But we’re not just talking about beer. Hard liquor is glorified! And unlike the crazy made-up food in this comic, the spirits are very real. Watch how the artist seductively introduces us to a glass of Blanton’s bourbon whiskey.

This makes me thirsty, and I don't even like bourbon.

It mocks Japan’s political allies.

One of the international organizations in Toriko runs an underground arena which pits the most ferocious creatures against one another. Yes, blood sport. If that isn’t bad enough, the clientele for these exhibitions are the world’s most wealthy and politically influential.

(They all have Western facial features.)

When an exhibition gets out of hand, people begin panicking and fleeing the arena, causing one of the manga’s heroes to exclaim:

In other words, “fuck you, nuclear-weapon states.” Things get interesting to me at this point, even though I’m really not a political guy.

I find it refreshing when the Japanese express a more individualistic and competitive worldview than the more genteel sentiments you’re used to hearing. I’m not saying they should go full-out nationalist, but some fire in the belly can make a people more interesting.

You see shades of this in Buronson’s seinen manga, for example. In particular I’m thinking of Sanctuary, Strain, and Japan, all of which have been published in English and I recommend reading.

It villainizes vegetarianism.

Japanese fiction is often preoccupied with the concept of apocalypse, as well as the precocious balance of nature. In Toriko, life on Earth was threatened with ecological disaster in the distant past.

What caused this? Ever-expanding human development? War? A meteor?

No! Enormously fat and ugly plant-eating monsters wouldn’t stop devouring the world’s vegetation.

Pictured above: someone sampling organic vegetables at Whole Foods Market

Seriously, it wasn’t until a giant wolf killed them all that harmony was restored and the Earth saved.

It’s saying something that in a manga about the unapologetic murdering of animals for the sake of one’s taste buds, the greatest threat the Earth has known comes in the form of herbivores. Think about it. Do you really think it’s a coincidence?

In conclusion…

Am I reading too deeply into these story elements? Perhaps. I do think there’s a devilish side to Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro, author of Toriko, that most have failed to articulate. At the very least, it may be an expression of core Blog of the North Star principles with which the author agrees: to eat, drink and be merry.

The Toriko anime adaptation whitewashes the majority of these amusing little moments out, which is why I’ve decided to only follow the manga for now. At first I tried to follow the anime exclusively and lost interest in the whole thing, but thanks to some prodding from @gokuffy, I’m back on the manga horse and loving it.

Wrong! It boils down to this: people unwittingly watch anime they don’t really like, and the activity of watching anime loses its overall value as a result. It’s the opposite of the Aesop’s Fable where the Fox can’t get the grapes, so he lies to himself and says they’d taste bad. In this case, people force themselves to eat sour grapes, and respond to their displeasure by thinking they must be burnt out on grapes.

The question is: why do people eat sour grapes in the first place? I’m no psychology expert, but I’ve had plenty of conversations with anime fans. Here are some possible explanations, peppered with images from a great anime about self-rationalization: Paranoia Agent!

“Anime backlogs.”

Holy shit. Is there a faster way to suck the joy out of anything than thinking of it as a backlog?

“I’m backlogged on hiking trips. I’d better have one this weekend for fun!”

“I need to tackle this backlog of sexual maneuvers I’ve been meaning to get around to. Want to do the blind pirate tonight when we have sex?”

People think about anime in this way, and it’s sad. Leave backlogs to people who are paid to deal with them. It’s not a word that should pertain to a hobby. Treat anime like a second job and it will inevitably begin to seem like one.

Anime as a social experience supersedes anime as something enjoyable in its own right.

There’s always going to be something social about entertainment. But sometimes the enjoyment of an anime is outpaced by its function as a social adjunct, with bitterness being the inevitable result. I made a conscious effort not to pick on Gundam fans this entire post, but they’re a prime example here.*

Some people have seen every Gundam series ever aired. Is it because Gundam is a franchise made up of nothing but awesome shows? Hell no. It’s because Gundam fans seek an encyclopedic common ground from which they can derive a never-ending stream of arguments and debates. Look up the “Gundam tier lists” people have compiled, where they rank the shows that make up the Gundam universe into different levels, and then argue about it. Or the endlessly unproductive discussions of what someone new to Gundam should watch and in what order.

Some people are “burnt out” on anime because they forced themselves to watch stuff they didn’t enjoy for social reasons. Perhaps they watched it with friends. Or so that they could blog about it. Or because they felt obligated in order to converse about anime at a certain level.

* I’m not talking about all Gundam fans so please don’t beam spam me

“I like anime, I’m supposed to watch it!”

Maybe you don’t like anime, homie. Maybe you outgrew it. Maybe you’re only going to enjoy the same fifteen shows and seven movies for the rest of your life.

It can be hard, especially for geeks, to admit these sorts of things to themselves. Geeks tend to self-identify by their hobbies more than normal people. If you have an enormous amount of information about anime stored in your head, admitting you don’t have much use for it and would rather play Roller Coaster Tycoon for eight hours straight can be hard, even if it’s true.

(It’s often true. If you like anime, you don’t have tell people you’re also a gamer. We can do the “99% of anime fans like video games more” math.)

In conclusion:

If you’re not having fun watching anime, there could be a million reasons relating to the anime itself, the aesthetics of your viewing experience, or personal life issues that are getting in the way. Or you just don’t like anime anymore for whatever reason. In this light, “anime burnout” quickly becomes a dumb, vague descriptor for the complex relationship between your self-image (I am a person who is supposed to watch anime) and your behavior (I am not watching anime).

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.

Toei released a press statement on their website explaining the search for a director is underway, but the eponymous role of amoral womanizer and assassin Duke Togo, aka Golgo 13, has been given to child actor Seishiro Kato, pictured right.

The announcement, hot on the heels of reports Jun Matsumoto will star in a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure movie, is believed to be a  case of strategic one-upmanship, with Toei competitively trying to outdo the horrible casting decisions of other Japanese movie studios.

Blog of the North Star could not reach Kato for comment. As his agent explained, he was put to bed early by his parents for not finishing his dinner.

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. I’m glad to have finally relented against my former skepticism.

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.