Gantz: First Phase

SPOILER WARNING

The first "phase" of Gantz ended around 240 chapters into it. While I have since read up to chapter 272 (the latest chapter) there are some thoughts that I had while reading.

1. In the last entry I said something to the effect that I wanted several of the characters back. Looks like that's not as far-fetched as I thought. This series is approaching DBZ levels of resurrection.

2. The fights still drag terribly. Seriously, they get really frickin boring. The first few were great. The very first in particular was excellent. It had only two aliens, one of which went down without a great fight. But it was tense, and visceral, and didn't outstay it's welcome. It was used to extend character motivation and was chilling in places. The current fight started about 30 chapters ago, and is still going strong.

3. There are still no significant advances in the plot. All we know is that there are some other Gantz spheres, and there may be a master sphere in Germany. The vampires are probably aligned with the aliens, but that doesn't stop them slaughtering each other if necessary. I really want to know more, but it doesn't look like I will any time soon.

4. The death of Izumi seemed a little quick. He had been built up for 70 or so chapters as a cool anti-hero. While his death is suitably epic, it seems like wasted potential.

5. I'll restate my opinion on the vampires. Seriously, katana wielding vampires are really original. Unless you count Anita Blake, or Underworld, or World of Darkness, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or any vampire fiction written since 1990. Why can't vampires go back to being solitary predators of the night? You know, scary.

6. Seriously. MORE PLOT! I read stories for the story. The violence is cool and all, but I really want the plot to kick in, and there's no signs of that happening soon.

Gantz has so much potential, but it seems wasted somehow.

Gantz: Enjoyable, yet infuriating

SPOILER WARNING

Don't get me wrong, Gantz is a good series, but there are several things that pissed me off about it.

1. The fight in the temple, where the entire established cast bar one is cheerfully annihilated, including the coolest character in the series.

2. The fight scenes are epically long. The Dinosaur fight for example took almost 30 chapters to complete. It was a cool fight, but it dragged after a while. I actually tend to prefer the parts where fights aren't going on, as the plot and characters get their chance to shine. The fights have also lost the sheer, visceral horror that made the first couple of them so tense and fun to read.

3. Apart from the introduction of the vampires, which I'll get to in a minute, the plot really hasn't gone anywhere since the temple fight. I'm 167 chapters in and I still have no clue about any of the forces at work in the series. New mysteries have presented themselves, but none of the old ones have been resolved, in fact they seem to have been ignored entirely. This is unsatisfying to say the least.

4. The introduction of katana wielding vampires. Some people just might say that that is a little bit cliched.

5. The relationships between characters are developing nicely, but I still want some of the old characters back, especially Kato. The story is on the back-burner.

Still, the series is somewhat addictive, so I'll stick with it for now.

Gantz: First Impressions

After finishing Suzuka I needed another manga to read, so I chose largely at random from the list of manga on onemanga. I ended up with Gantz. The story is...unique, to say the least. Sometimes, when people die, they get taken to a small apartment in Tokyo to fight aliens on behalf of a giant sphere that speaks only in leetspeak. No....really. Imaginative? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Still, it's a blast. I haven't read manga this fast since Battle Royale, and the series does actually share some similarities stylistically with that cavalcade of fetishistic violence and extravagent nudity. It's bloody, to say the least, and it does seem that it sometimes uses blood and gore as a standin for actual storytelling.

Still, it's fresh and original, and fairly dark too. The main character seems to be undergoing a fall from sanity, probably from gazing too long across the abyss. The character development is reasonably well done so far, and I look forward to seeing where this one is going.

Suzuka

I just finished reading the manga series Suzuka. I was initially sceptical about it, and the terms that Onemanga described it in really didn't help. They said something to this effect:

Yamato is ready for a fresh start. So when his aunt invites him to stay rent-free in her big-city boarding house in hustling, bustling Tokyo, Yamato jumps at the chance. There's just one teensy-weensy catch: It's an all-girl housing complex and spa!

I was not convinced by this at all. If I was lucky, I thought, it would be a Love Hina clone. If I was unlucky, it would be a Hanaukyo Maid Team clone. The latter I don't want because they suck, the former I don't want because I've already read Love Hina and, while it isn't the greatest harem comedy around (that honour goes in my opinion to Akamatsu's other opus, Negima), it is about as good as the genre is ever going to get without going into other genres like shonen fighting.

So it was with trepidation that I approached the series. Fortunately, I was pleasently surprised. The manga is not a typical harem manga at all. There are a couple of characters who do play up the stereotype, but it's in a light-hearted way, and they are developed characters, not placeholders.

The main romance is handled well for the most part, although a little clumsily at times. There's just a little too much of the main character screwing up and having to work out why and how he should apologise. That gets tedious after the fifth or sixth time. However, the mature plot and well developed characters more than makes up for that fact. Yamato Akitsuki stands out in particular. Usually I hate the main characters in romance, and Akitsuki joins Keitaro Urashima and Kasuga Kyouske in the critically small list of 'romantic comedy protagonists that don't piss me off.'

The main female lead, the titular Suzuka, is an equally interesting character, albeit marred by a tendancy for the author to keep trying to make her motivations and thoughts a mystery to the reader even after we have figured them out, which leads to her being annoying at times.

Now one of my opinions, of which I have many, is that the quality of a romantic comedy can be assessed by how it handles secondary romances. That is, other people who fancy either the male or female protagonist. There are basically two ways I can see of doing this right. Love Hina did this well by largely ignoring all of them as potential candidates except for Mutsumi. Kimagure Orange Road, on the other hand, does it well by giving these other candidates personality and depth and giving the protagonists real reasons to think about choosing them. This is the more mature route, but it is very difficult to pull off. Most harem comedies try this route, and end up failing miserably, leaving them with a cast of bland, generic secondary females who exist for no other reason than to hamper the main relationship and provide fanservice.

Suzuka takes the Kimagure route, and does it well. Part of this is that there are only three other potentials in the whole series, one of whom does not appear very long. They all have their own personalities, none of them are annoying, and there would have been valid ways to characterise Yamato going with any of them. To top it off, they all have their own story arcs, which means that they are never there solely to try to get the guy. This is the way to do multiple potential romances, if you're going to do them at all.

That being said, the series is not without its problems. The ending feels rushed, and happens very quickly. I won't spoil the ending, but I will say this: while there is no doubt that it's a very happy ending, it might annoy people. It is certainly a fairly mature ending, and it is reasonable to imagine that real life might go a little bit like that, but there is a bittersweet tinge to it.

The art is good, but not spectacular by any means. The character designs are also nice, and all characters have a certain feel to them. The obligatory fanservice is not as intrusive as it can be in some mangas, and it takes a back seat to the story, which is the driving force of this series.

All in all I can heartily recommend this series to anyone who likes shonen romance. If you liked Kimagure, or Maison Ikkoku, then go ahead and read it. If you're into anything more violent, or with lots of fanservice, then give this one a miss.

My current manga collection

Because I wanted to quantify exactly how much manga I had, I will list them here. This also serves to display my arrogance at the fact that I have a shocking amount. This is from memory, so I probably have more.

Dragonball: 42 volumes
Naruto: 37 volumes (technically cheating as some is computerised. English manga hasn't been released that far yet, so I have to get scanlated manga, which is actually better quality translation!)
Oh! My Goddess!: 26 volumes
Battle Royale: 15 volumes
Love Hina: 14 volumes
Negima: 13 volumes
One Piece: 13 volumes
Great Teacher Onizuka: 9 volumes
Ikkitousen: 8 volumes
Arm of Kannon: 8 volumes
Chobits: 8 volumes
Priest: 6 volumes
Psychic Academy: 4 volumes
Ai Yori Aoshi: 3 volumes
.Hack// Legend of the Twilight: 3 volumes
Deus Vitae: 3 volumes
Azumanga Daioh: 2 volumes
Saiyuki: 1 volume

So there you have it. 226 (if my maths is good, which it usually isn't) volumes that I recall, probably a couple of dozen more that I don't. At between 5 and 7 quid a time, that totals a shocking amount, although I got a lot of them on special deals. For example, I bought a lot of them at this small comic shop near where I live. The guy who owns it is cool. He gave me pretty much all of Dragonball free when they were clearing stock because he knew I liked it (and I bought the first dozen or so volumes.)

Manga is cool, and looks cool while displayed on a shelf in alphabetical order.

Reflections on cherished manga

I recently re-read the entirety of Dragonball. That's right, all 42 volumes of it. I first read it not so long ago, maybe a couple of years ago, but it never ceases to amaze me just how different in tone the later volumes are to the earlier ones. Personally, I much prefer the humourous fantasy that so characterised the first part. As soon as it hits what the translations call DBZ it starts to go downhill. Don't get me wrong, I still love it, but it does start to take itself far too seriously.

I'm fairly certain that Toriyama wanted to quit writing it long before he actually did. Look at all the chances he gave himself to stop writing:
1. He could have finished with the end of the Piccolo Jr. Arc. Goku has become the most powerful on Earth. The demon Piccolo is still a threat, but we know that he can't really beat Goku, so all is well.
2. He could have finished at the end of the Frieza Arc. Goku has beaten Frieza, the most powerful being in the universe. Piccolo, having re-discovered his Namek heritage, is more or less a good-guy. Even Vegeta probably won't try anything too evil, so all is well.
3. He could have finished at the end of the Cell Arc. Goku is dead, and wishes to remain so. His story has come full circle. Rising to become the Earth's defender, and then passing on the torch. Gohan has assumed his duties as protector of the Earth. With Piccolo, Vegeta and Gohan protecting the Earth, all is well.

The absolute absurdity of the Buu Arc (Gohan goes to school! The entire population gets turned into chocolate! The fusion dance!) suggests very strongly a kind of 'I'm gettting tired of this, I want to end it and try something new' thought chain from Toriyama. Any of the aforementioned points would have been excellent ending points, and if I bet Toriyama would have been happy ending the series at any of them. So why didn't he? In a word, money. Dragonball was a cash cow for Shonen Jump, and they didn't want him to stop writing it.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Buu Arc. It's wackiness is remeniscent of the early volumes of the manga. I love all of the characters introduced in it: Videl, Goten, Trunks, Vegito (Yeah, yeah he's a fusion I know, but he's almost certainly the most powerful being in all of the Dragonverse including the awfulness that was GT. He's even the World's strongest coffee candy!). I love that the Earth is finally given the oppurtunity to save itself and almost turns it down.

However, I hate the idea that Toriyama might have burned himself out writing Dragonball. He is a very talented artist, and I first came across his work seeing the character designs for the legendary Chrono Trigger (Yeah, that was him).

Anyway, I guess the main point of this is that, even now, I still love Dragonball.

Manga: is it worth the money?

I'll preface this post saying that I buy a lot of manga. However, the problem is, as with most things, price. A volume of manga from tokyopop bought in Waterstones costs £7. I beleive Tanoshimi manga to be £6, not a whole lot cheaper. Bought online, you can still expect to pay at least £5.

Is it worth it? Now, depending on the style of manga, it takes me between twenty minutes and sixty minutes to read a manga volume. That's between 8p and 35p per minute of enjoyment. Compare that to the most recent book I bought, a new copy of Raymond Feist's 'Magician' (my old copy has literally disintegrated due to being read too much). I paid a whopping £9 for it. However, it takes me at least seven or eight hours to read it. That's a mere 1.9p/minute, about the cost of an average landline phone call, and over four times better value than the best value manga.

Of course, these statistice are horribly inaccurate, being as they don't take into account the fact that I tend to re-read everything, the fact that there is relative levels of enjoyment (some manga I enjoy a lot, other manga I continue reading literally because I don't want to leave it half-way through.)

Will this stop me buying manga? Don't be silly.

P.S: It seems like a huge difference in manga reading times. I'll just say here that the manga I read fastest tends to be things like Battle Royale, with it's huge panels, limited dialogue and abundence of double-page spreads. The manga that takes me the longest is probably Love Hina, with it's tiny panels, massive amounts of dialogue and virtually no DPSs.

Review: Love Hina

This is a review of the manga, seeing as I haven't seen most of the anime. First the details: Love Hina was penned by Ken Akamatsu, who is also known for the manga 'A. I. Love You', which I haven't actually read, and Negima, which I have read 12 volumes of. Love Hina is 14 volumes long and available in English from Tokyopop.

Plot: Fifteen years ago the then-four-years-old Urashima Keitaro made a promise with a girl that they would meet up again at Tokyo University. Unfortunately he hasn't seen the girl since and he has since been rejected from the University two years running. After he decides to apply for a third time he is kicked out of his parents house, and goes to live in the inn owned by his elderly grandmother. He arrives, only to find that the inn has been converted into a dormintory for girls run by his aunt. Of course he doesn't find this out until the usual ecchi hijinks have ensued causing a huge amount of misunderstanding. After a few arguments he is allowed to stay at the dorm when his grandmother passes the title deed to the building to him by fax.

Review: Firstly, I want to go over what I thought of the plot. From the summary I've given you it would seem to be just another harem series. This is not the case. The narrative skillfully weaves several plotlines including Keitaro's desire to get into Tokyo University, his growing relationship with one of the girls in the dorm, and subplots involving most characters. The relationship that Keitaro develops with one of the girls throughout the series is actually rather well-founded. Most harem series tries to confuse you as to which girl the main character will end up with, resulting in a relationship out of nowhere towards the end. Akamatsu takes a different route. By the end of the first volume we can tell exactly which girl Keitaro will eventually get together with, which leaves Akamatsu the rest of the series to develop a believable relationship between them. Many people are put off by the traditional humourous violence that is inherent in the genre, but you have to look past it.

Art: I once read that Akamatsu-sensei used to draw hentai, and the skill with which he can draw the human form makes me inclined to believe it. Because most of the series is set in and around Hinata House (the girls dorm), backgrounds tend to be used again and again.

Characters: The main characters, Keitaro and Narusegawa Naru, are very well developed, although I find Keitaro a little annoying. The other characters start as very simple archetypes, such as the crazy foreigner (Koalla Su), the shy one with a juvenile crush (Maehara Shinobu), the reserved swordswoman who isn't sure how to deal with the opposite gender (Aoyama Motoko), and the money-loving gambling alcoholic prankster (Mitsune 'Kitsune' Konno). All of them are traditional archetypes for the genre (although the swordswoman isn't always a swordswoman, just somewhat reserved!), but the subplots which Akamatsu integrates into the manga mean that they rise above these simple stereotypes. The only exception to this is Kitsune, who is still the same character near the end as the beginning. To his credit, Akamatsu mentions this in the notes included at the end of one of the volumes, but that doens't make up for not giving her more to do. She is most often used to further the plot, often by accidentally revealing information. Again, to Akamatsu's credit, he has a character much like her in Negima who does get the screentime she so richly deserves.

Overall: This was one of my first manga series, so naturally I look back on it with some fondness. In fact, writing this review had made me more than a little nostalgic about it, so I will probably read it again when I get home from University. If, in a couple of weeks, you have a post here rubbishing it, that's why. However, until then, I have very few bad things to say about it. It takes the usual harem genre and completely subverts it and shows that it can be done really well.

8/10: Excellent series that everyone should read.