Month: December 2010

Categories
Manga News

PR: Kamisama Kiss Coming Soon From Viz

I tend to only run press releases I am genuinely enthusiastic about, which is definitely the case with the new Julietta Suzuki series Kamisama Kiss. I’d want to get it in any case because I think her series Karakuri Odette is fantastic, and now I’m intrigued with the premise of the story:

Nanami, alone & homeless after her dad skips town to avoid the debt collectors, saves a mysterious man from a dog attack. Grateful for the rescue, he offers Nanami his home with a kiss on her forehead. Little does she know, but Nanami has just taken over his home…AND his job as the local deity! Adjustments and new responsibilities lay ahead as Nanami faces a host of supernatural creatures, and finds what might be love with the recalcitrant yokai caretaker!

Suzuki managed to make the off-putting at first glance premise of an android girl attending high school genuinely interesting and heartwarming, so I’m very curious to see what she does with gods and yokai. Here’s the full press release:

VIZ MEDIA RELEASES DIVINE ROMANTIC COMEDY KAMISAMA KISS

A Kiss On The Forehead Is A Girl’s Ticket To A New Home And An Unexpected Life As A Deity

San Francisco, CA, December 2, 2010 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, will release the shojo manga (graphic novels for female readers) romantic comedy, KAMISAMA KISS, on December 7th. The new series, created by Julietta Suzuki, will be published under the company’s Shojo Beat imprint, is rated ‘T’ for Teens, and will carry an MSRP of $9.99 U.S. / $12.99 CAN.
Nanami Momozono is alone and homeless after her dad skips town to evade his gambling debts and the debt collectors kick her out of her apartment. So when a mysterious man she’s just saved from a dog attack offers her his home, she jumps at the opportunity. But it turns out that his place is a shrine, and Nanami has unwittingly taken over his job as a local deity!

“Plenty of surprises are in store for Nanami as she adjusts to life at the shrine, taking on new responsibilities and facing a whole range of hidden dangers that she doesn’t fully understand yet,” says Pancha Diaz, Editor. “A kiss on the forehead might have bestowed the land-god mark on Nanami, but she will have a lot to learn as she faces a bratty sky god, a mysterious swamp deity, and a strange, cute boy who might have supernatural powers of his own!”
Julietta Suzuki’s debut manga The Day One Becomes A Star appeared in Hana to Yume Plus magazine in 2004. Her other published works include The Devil And Sweets, Karakuri Odette, and Kamisama Kiss, which is currently featured in Hana to Yume.

For more information on KAMISAMA KISS, or other shojo titles from VIZ Media, please visit www.ShojoBeat.com.

Categories
Manga Blogging

Manga Moveable Feast: Stretchy Super Heroes

I’m working on writing up a review of the first couple volumes of One Piece for the Manga Moveable Feast, but I thought I’d take the time to talk about other characters in comics who have similar stretchy powers as One Piece’s enthusiastic protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. While Luffy gained his rubber powers by eating the fruit of the Gum Gum tree, there are plenty of examples of super heroes with magical stretchy abilities in western comics. Here’s a brief overview of some stretchy superheros.

Reed Richards aka Mr Fantastic:
The leader of the Fantastic Four, Reed Richards gained his stretching abilities due to a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong. The funny thing about Reed Richard’s powers is that for someone with such goofy-looking powers, Reed is unquestionably a total stiff in terms of his personality. The contrast between his somewhat frivolous powers and his intellect make him an interesting leader of one of the classic super teams, even though he’d rather spend all of his time in a lab.

The Elongated Man

In an amusing coincidence, the Elongated Man’s powers are also fruit based. It seems like poor Ralph Dibney is always going to be a second-string character, because it doesn’t do much good to be a detective in the same universe as Batman. It also doesn’t seem to be all that wonderful to be super stretchy in a universe containing Plastic Man. He’s doomed to be second best and he and his wife seem to be mainly used as cannon fodder in DC crossover event comics.

Jimmy Olsen (Elastic Lad)

When Superman’s best friend travels forward in time to hang out with the Legion of Super-Heroes, he does so by taking on the abilities of Elastic Lad when he drinks a serum. Unfortunately his super powers do not enable him to make time with the Legion ladies very effectively. Jimmy’s transformation into Elastic Lad were part of a general pattern where he endured being changed into any number of strange creatures. If you’ve been transformed into a giant turtle boy, gorilla, or a radioactive dude having temporary elastic powers seems completely normal.

Plastic Man

Plastic Man is by far my favorite stretchy super hero, mainly because Jack Cole was an incredibly talented cartoonist who took full advantage of the idea of someone having elastic powers. Eel O’Brian was a thief who was splashed by a strange acid, gaining Most stretchy superheroes have some degree of invulnerability due to their malleable nature, but Plastic Man is able to transform himself into any shape imaginable while still retaining the distinctive red and yellow coloring of his costume. Plastic Man comics end up being delightfully surreal, but comics featuring other heroes with elastic powers often just focus on their stretchy limbs instead of taking full advantage of the possibilities of a person made of rubber.

Luffy seems to be partially invulnerable due to his rubber powers, but he mostly uses his elastic abilities to pack some powerful punches, just based on the first couple volumes. I’m curious to see how his elastic powers are used further into series.

Categories
Manga Reviews

Viz Signature Quick Takes – 20th Century Boys, Children of the Sea, and Detroit Metal City

20th Century Boys Volume 11

I made a conscious decision that I was going to invest in one Urasawa series, and that would be 20th Century Boys. I read the first three volumes of Monster, and a couple volumes of Pluto but I just feel more invested in finding out what’s going to happen in the sprawling narrative of 20th Century Boys than Urasawa’s other series. With the eleventh volume, we’re at the halfway mark for the series, and there’s plenty of emotional trauma and action as Kanna finds out the truth behind her parentage and the Friends are on the street persecuting any ally of Kanna’s they can find.

Kanna finds out that her father is the Friend, and lapses into a fugue-like state because she’s utterly unable to process that information. Her connection to her beloved uncle Kenji is severed when her old walkman finally stops working and she’s no longer able to listen to his songs. Seeing Kanna brought down so much made me realize again how young she is, even though she’s exhibited cleverness and charisma as she moves towards being the focus of a resistance movement against the friends. Kanna works through the revelation about her father only to find out that her missing mother was a biomedical researcher who might have contributed the disease outbreak that proceeded the Bloody New Year’s Eve. Sadakiyo makes a final decision about what to do with his life, and Kanna meets up with classmate Kyoko and some of Kenji’s other allies. A special bonus in this volume was the reappearance of Otcho, who is one of my favorite characters. I can see the different threads of Urasawa’s story start to come together, and I’m happy to be on board for the next ten volumes.

Children of the Sea Volume 4

I read the first volume of Children of the Sea and caught a few chapters online, but I’ve missed a some chapters. Fortunately so much of this series is expressed in the beautiful art, it was easy just to crack open the book and let the atmosphere created by the philosophical characters and gorgeous illustrations wash over me.

Ruka has vanished with Umi and quirky scientist Anglade. Her parents and Jim are left alone to unravel the mystery behind her disappearance. While sending out search parties is ineffective, Ruka’s mother who used to be a traditional shell diver sets out to find her daughter along with the wisewoman Dehdeh. Kanoko works through her own relationship with the sea as being on the ocean to find her daughter makes her recall her childhood. Other flashbacks feature the strained relationship between Anglade and Jim, with plenty of scientific theorizing from Anglade as he touches on issues of evolution, astronomy, and the nature of time and space. Ruka and Sora explore a strange underwater world in the presence of a mystical meteorite. I had no idea what was going on with Ruka and Sora, but the images of them encountering bizarre sea creatures were arresting. Igarashi creates this manga with such a unique atmosphere and reading experience. I wouldn’t have thought that the mysteries of the sea combined with child explorers and a healthy dose of scientific theorizing would be so compelling, but Children of the Sea pulls it off admirably.

Detroit Metal City #7

Detroit Metal City is a manga that I’m happy to read if I stumble across a copy, but I probably wouldn’t make a special effort to seek it out. I did think in my review of the previous volume that the hints of an ongoing storyline might combat the repetitive nature of the main joke behind this manga about the meek Soichi who is helpless in the face of his uncanny talent for being a profane front man for a death metal band.

Unfortunately I found that the story carried over from the last volume dragged a little bit. Soichi has found a substitute Krauser II to take his place, but a challenger named Krauser I may destroy DMC. Despite a truly odd sequence of Krauser I raping Tokyo Tower, there wasn’t a whole lot of interest in the Krauser confrontation, as it seems that every contest ends with establishing that Soichi can yell “rape” faster than any human on the planet. I did enjoy Soichi’s ill-fated attempt to connect with his desire to create pop music by entering an artists’ colony. Despite the fact that Wakasugi isn’t the most gifted cartoonist around, seeing the blandly happy faces of the art students and reading Soichi’s lame pronouncements like “the curry might get cold, but never our passion” was hilarious. The volume finished up with a few short chapters about a bad hair day for Soichi and the lengths he will go to in order to prevent his younger brother from losing his virginity. So overall, DMC 7 was a bit of a mixed bag – there were a few very funny moments mixed in with some episodes that were a bit long.

Review copies for Children of the Sea and Detroit Metal City provided by the publisher.