AnimAICN: Akira manga, Giant Robo, GITS 2 DVD, GIGANTOR live action flick and much more!!!

Akira

Volume 1

By Katsuhiro Otomo

Barnes and Nobles Hard Cover Edition

Released by Dark Horse Comics

Dark Horse comics is releasing several hard cover editions of their manga titles exclusively through Barnes and Nobles, including the first volumes of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira and Yasuhiro Nightow's sci-fi western Trigun. The second volume of Trigun and the first of action horror Hellsing have been announced for a later date. The Akira hard cover in particular is a beautiful edition, a 350 page collection presenting Otomo's work on full sized pages, covered by one of his memory etching color works, featuring iconic biker punk Kaneda sitting on a thrown of destroyed technological artifacts and statuary. A glossed Akira character catches the light in a haunting way. Beyond Akira's role in the manga cannon, a must for a reader with an interesting in sci-fi, social-political drama or action, the beautiful edition is the superlative holiday gift for either the manga fan or non-manga-reader.

The anime movie of Akira was the monument that built much of early the reputation for non-children's anime. It is also the prime example of a manga being adapted into an highly divergent anime before the manga was finished, though in this case the adapter and creator were the same person, similar to Hayao Miyazaki's work on the Nausicaa anime movie and manga.

With the extra space of the manga series, the potency of the explosive sci-fi ideas is diluted, with the political complexity filling the vacuum. Through the course of the manga Otomo is able to complete a counter culture revolution of which unchecked technology advancement and spiritually play key roles, but are not the solitary determining factors.

The first volume plays like a simplified version of the movie, less a few characters, where the movie's final act replaces a divergent scene. Following a massive bombing at the commencement of World War III Tokyo was devastated. 38 years have gone by and Neo-Tokyo is desperately trying to put its past behind it by hosting the Olympics. Kaneda, a charismatic, quick thinking delinquent is taking his gang racing their motorcycles around the bomb crater when Tetsuo, Kaneda's far less assertive friend, nearly hit in strikingly shriveled child in the middle of the abandoned high way. Tetsuo's bike explodes before colliding with the child, who quickly disappears. As Kaneda's compatriots attempt to ascertain the situation when a mysterious jeep arrives, sends for an ambulance and police, then discreetly departs. Kaneda’s group return to their lives, not knowing what happened to Tetsuo, but in the dives and still crumbling alley ways that Kaneda frequents and he meets revolutionary and radicals who will lead him back to the military project tied to Tetsuo's fate

"God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka with a vocal proponent of Katsuhiro Otomo's work. While their styles and chosen subject matter was wildly differ (apart of Otomo's recent work on the anime adaptation of Tezuka's early manga Metropolis), it is hard to pick two comic illustrators who brought such the same caliber of cinematic depth to their works.

Otomo works a forceful art with his use of speed lines. Speed lines done simplistically can come across as a cheep tool, but with Otomo’s employs them with a level of sophistication that adds complex motion and thrust to tightly choreographed chases.

Taken with the concrete realism of detailed archenteron and mechanical design, there is a dircector’s sense of every detailing being thought through: the look of wind from passing vehicles, the reflection of a bolt about to break through the visor of out a motorcycle helmet, every cluttered conference room, graffiti marked sign or broom barred door handle seem the product of thorough thought. There isn't a panel that thrown together or a moment that marked too dull to warrant intense inspection.

Influenced by European comic illustrators Otomo paves his work with solid markers. In the inorganic realm, imagination is projected onto the recognizable patterns. He's creating new mechanical constructs, but they look like they can function rather than fanciful exhibition in a Jack Kirby vein, stylized representation, or flamboyant eye-grabbers in the tradition of many manga series.

The work was first released domestically by Marvel Comic's Epic line, where the illustration was colorized, color well intentioned, well implemented by Steve Oliff but detracting to Otomo's style. Presented on full sized paged, with a translated carefully integrated into the page by Studio Proteus the full impact of Otomo's design is maintained. Similarly, human expression is abstracted rather than stylized. His character look very human, and with a full range of expression they quickly establish a depth.

A review of the Dark Horse’s release of Katsuhiro Otomo’s urban horror Domu can be read here.

Manga Spotlight: Tokyo Tribes

Volume 1

By Santa Inoue

Released by TOKYOPOP

Tokyo Tribes is the type of concept whose execution needs to work to convince the reader. There's a tendency to be wary of haphazard mixes when attempting to merge traditions like hip-hop and manga since it seems a lucrative idea that could be poorly faked by cherry picking a few recognized element from the dominantly styles of each.

The series follows the underdogs in Tokyo's tribal gang divisions. The Musashino Saru are a smaller, apparently more easy going tribe, less formal, less uniformed than their larger competition, more likely to meet at a diner than a brothel. Still, with dead tribe members turning up in the city and young women being kidnapped, the tribe finds itself walking deeper into the city's conflicts.

Tokyo Tribes isn't instantly recognizable as the genuine article. The offered caveat that the series was originally published in the late 1990's, which can be quaint in terms such as what video game system is in vogue, but instead it is the general texture that requires the story to gain running speed before the series can becoming convincing. The illustrations western influence gives it the look of western attempts to duplicate a manga-look, mixed with moment of odd inspiration that takes in more in the direction of Taiyo Matsumoto (No. 5, Black and White). Ultimately, while not as stunning as Taiyo Matsumoto's works, it does have impressive in its variety and granularity of design.

Still, by the end of the volume there is a desire to see how the characters will react to what has happened and what will happen. The surprisingly violent conclusion to the first chapter establishes the stakes in a manner similar to the first deal in Scarface. Then by the time that the characters and their history have been introduced there is an interesting hero/anti-hero antagonist relationship, a stunningly vile villain and enough material for an engaging story.

The history and divide between hero and anti-hero is believable and gripping, but what seems more promising is the potential for some sprawling gang warfare of a brutally personal level. Santa Inoue has established a city sized scope for his designs.

To avoid giving the series a mature rating and shrink wrapping it, various instances of sex and nudity are obscured. Comparable to had Todd Solondz reacted in his movie Storytelling by hiding a sex scene up a large red bar, Santa Inoue redacts his illustration with invasive black "censored" bars. There may be something in the level of acceptable violence compared the level of accepted nudity to be seen in that the cover of a porno magazine is block out, but the grizzly result of a man being split open by sodomy are left intact. The irony is taken further by not censor naked statues. Illustrators of naked humans or illustrations of naked photographs are censored, but depictions of naked humans or human anatomy are left untouched.

Anime Spotlight: Giant Robo

Volume 1: The Day the Earth Stood Still

Released by Media Blaster's Anime Works Line

Of the catalogue of domestically released anime, Giant Robo was previously the one of the titles most wanting a DVD release. Released gradually over the span of the 90's, the seven episode OAV paid tribute to the world of manga creator Mitsuteru Yokoyama (Tetsujin 28-go aka Gigantor) in a retro-pulp opera in which a tangibly monumental giant construct thunders through a generation old vendetta, and the battle between the elites of justice and crime. There's a unmistakable passion in the series, that this is the series that its creators, especially Yasuhiro Imagawa, had been wishing to make, and consequently they are were certain to do it justice. In the sense of the giant robot as an imagination capture feet of grandeur and un-self-consciousness fun the accomplishment of Giant Robot haven't been reproduced.

In a brave new future, founded by clean-energy producing Shizuma Drive , Daisaku, a schoolboy who controls Giant Robo his riveted gargantuan in a pharaoh’s head dress through a right communicator into the conflict between the cabal of villains Big Fire and the elite guardians of the Experts of Justice.

While Mitsuteru Yokoyama is best known as the creator of Tetsujin 28-go, but his works ranged from an adaptation of feudal Chinese epic Suikoden/Water Margin to early magic girl Little Witch Sally. Through the lens of this knowledge, the mark of other genre, especially Suikoden on the work is stunning. Many of the heroes are directly taken from the epic, the hero's headquarters is set in its marches, and manga abstracted Chinese aesthetic permeates the series almost to the Flesher steel sci-fi.

The series develops in surprising directions considering what at first appears to be complete lack of subtly. It doesn't have the human depth and symbolism that post-Evangelion works would try to force into genre, but there is an intrigue depth to the world, the characters and their history.

Extra include the original English language dub, which was controversial for some of the liberties it took, but is fondly remembered

Manga Spotlight: Madara

Volume 1

By Sho-u Tajima and Eiji Otsuku

Released by CMX Manga

Madara is the first work by the duo who would later be best known for MPD Pyscho, an often grotesquely violent story of a detective with multiple personality disorder, adapted into a live action mini-series by Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Gozu, Dead or Alive ect).

The fantasy adventure follows a young warrior who is destined to overthrow his land’s evil emperor. After the child's birth, the emperor had his body dismembered. The surviving child found by villagers and is given new "gadget" artificial body parts. After his village is attacked by monsters, the boy rediscovers his destiny, and learns that he must recovered his original body from the emperor's generals and content with rivals for the prophecy's object.

The results are text book-hero's quest, down to a magic sword and odd mentor creature, but Sho-u Tajima and Eiji Otsuku add what will eventually develop into a bewitching brutality in their later works, some noteworthy monster design including a mouth spotted bat-amalgamation creature and a oversized rabbit-general and an clever cultural mélange. Story and design pick elements from sci-fi cybernetics,Western pop-culture such as Jason hockey mask, biblical desert epics, Japanese mythology such as the eight-headed orochi serpent, and Hindu/Buddhist concepts and aesthetics such as the Naruto fan-popularized chakra energy nodes or mandala chartings.

There are two significant stylistic markers to the series. First, despite the 1996 copyright and first published date on the collection's credit page, the work was originally published in 1987 (an anime adaptation, released domestically by Media Blasters was released in 1991). In style and content it resembles the early direct to video OAVs, which were testing the waters the against shallow boundaries violence and nudity. Manga wasn't the same tentative medium, Go Nagai startied his Violence Jack in 1973, but the Madara's look and feel resemble its contemporary sci-fi anime OAV such as Toshihiro Hirano's works (Dangaioh , ect).

Secondly, like many manga series, it was originally written for an anthology, and in this case, it reads as such. In an anthology, intelligent and logical transitions between chapters aren't needed as long as the reader can pick up the series' concept, and each chapter is engaging. Once collected into a volume, rapid, transitionless jumps leaves the impression of video game levels, rapidly defeating adversaries and quickly moving on to something radically different.

Anime Spotlight

Fruits Basket

Box Set

Released by FUNimation

Fruits Basket takes a comic device, turns it into a curse in which the afflicted are both entertaining caricatures, and the fascinating victims of a sociological experiment. The pivotal theme is the reaction to being ostracized. Fruits Basket takes its names from a duck-duck-goose children's game in which the child named for something that doesn’t in a fruits basket is kicked out the circle. The series follows Tohru Honda, a resolutely positive teenage girl who is barely pulling through since the death of her mother, working late hours after school and living in a tent. She has close friends, an eerie sullen girl, and a girl who like Tohru's mother scraped through gang affiliation, and an elderly grandfather, but with their own lives’ complexities, Tohru wouldn't allow herself to impose on them. She then finds a new home when she falls in with three members of the Sohma clan, a family cursed to become animals of the Chinese zodiac when embraced by a member of the opposite sex.

It sounds like a goofy comedy premise, and the series delightfully allows this full room exercise itself, not just the cat and mouse antics of Tohru's two peer house mates and that there are a set of people who turn into adorable, generally abashed looking animals, but the bevy of idiosyncratic personalities among the Sohma clan. Still, it doesn’t take the series long to establish that the emotional reaction to the curse separated the afflicted not just from society at large, but from parents and siblings. The resulting personality quirks may be entertaining for a person with the viewers’ distance, but for the characters they are pathological symptoms or unhealthy defense mechanisms.

Tohru’s openness becomes a tool in which the members of the Sohma clan are able to address and redress their problems. There is a hopefulness in the small steps that the character take to improving themselves. At its worse, it is a bit obvious, as she meets ANOTHER Sohma who she will greet with understand and improve, but not more than a well regarded character piece like the recent Sideways.

Some of the glint on director Akitaroh Daichi's star has faded after several short works that were less engaging in implementation than concept but Fruits Baskets stands as one of his superb adaptations works. He lends the infectious energy of style to a series that can in turns be humorous or dramatic. Daichi has a real skill in pacing, not just comic timing, which he has down, but the ability to range from manic dashes to introspective pauses. The original manga was a shojo work, but one whose character range easily appeals to non-shojo fan. Daichi recasts the work as a situational comedy, but one in which, again, the characters transcend the expectations of the form.

Daichi addresses the problem of unresolved source material by making every chapter in his adaptation matter. There isn’t a conventional sense of filler material because each character is given a distinctive presence. He uses lulls to put in own stamp on the series (beyond his onigiri/rice ball alien avatar that shows up in commercial break eye catches). In particular he has fun with a group of school girls who role is restricted to making Tohru’s life difficult. He leaves them largely unlikable, but humanizes them, and gives the star roles in some of his most visibly creative material, including a nice Blair Witch-esque episode and some interesting visual filters.

Geneon Entertainment Signs Distribution Agreement With Toei Animation Geneon Entertainment has announced an agreement to distributed anime by Toei Animation in the U.S. and Canada. The first titles slated to be distributed under the agreement are Air Master, Interlude and Slam Dunk. Toei Animation is credited with international smash hit properties such as Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon and Digimon and has created over 180 film and television titles well known by children and adults all over the world.

Air Master is a quirky, well action series about a competitive gymnast turned street fighter.

Interlude is a supernatural thriller.

Slam Dunk is the adaptation of Takehiko Inoue's landmark Basketball manga.

Unconfirmed Viz Manga Licenses