Kimi no Iru Machi - the anime

Kimi No Iru Machi (A Town Where You Live) is an anime based on the manga of the same name from manga-ka Kouji Seo who also created Suzuka.  This 12 episode series aired over the summer off-season in 2013 in Japan.

                The anime is split between two different story lines.  The first deals with the main character, Haruto Kirishima moving from Hiroshima to Tokyo in the middle of high school to chase after his long distant girl friend, Yuzuki Eba.  Previously, Yuzuki had moved from Tokyo to live with Haruto’s parents in order to escape her aggressive younger step sister.  Haruto is resistant at first due Yuzuki’s clingy and needy habits.  But as they spend more time together he begins to have feelings for her and eventually they begin dating.  The relationship doesn’t last as Yuzuki inexplicably returns to Tokyo and eventually cuts off all contact with Haruto.  Hence why Haruto has decided to move to the big city and live with his older sister.  Through his sister, Haruto is introduced and becomes friends with fellow classmates Asuka Mishima and Kyosuke Kazama.  Asuka is Haruto’s sisters’ neighbor and is initially gruff towards Haruto but soon enough they become friendly and you can sense some growing affection for him.  Kyosuke on the other hand is more than happy to have a guy he can hang out with and quickly takes him under his wing.  Eventually both of his new friends find out his purpose for moving abruptly and try to help him find his lost love.  Haruto does track down Yuzuki, who has become cold towards him and tells him she has started to date someone from her past.  Unknown to everyone, that boyfriend is Kyosuke.  When the truth is told and everyone realizes what’s going on Haruto challenges Kyosuke for Yuzuki’s hand.

                The second part of the anime jumps into the future a year and a half.  We find Haruto and Asuka as a happy and comfortable couple, both attending college and somewhat planning a life together, one step at a time.  Trouble for the happy couple starts to brew when Yuzuki's step sister, Rin, all of sudden decides to try and hook Haruto back up with Yuzuki…through nefarious means.  At first Haruto is honest with Asuka about what’s transpiring, but as he begins to examine his dormant feelings for Yuzuki he starts to rethink his current relationship.

                OK…way back in 2009 I had started reading the manga due to my enjoyment of the Suzuka anime and manga.  It was ok, not too bad, but at some point I had stopped reading it…and I can’t recall why.  From the hazy memory of what I read some of the information and events in the anime were familiar.  The manga is still ongoing, and about 250 or so issues into the story.   Something tells me that the anime ultimately diverges from the manga or only covers two small story arcs.  Either way I should probably get back to reading it to find out what’s up.

                That said the anime kind of pissed me off.  The first half, while mostly familiar from the manga, seemed rushed and haphazard.  Plenty of things were left out, like Rin being Yuzuki’s step sister.  The second part of the anime started off really nice.  It was good to see Haruto apparently mature and comfortable with his situation.  Then Rin steps in and starts to mess shit up.  For a while it still went smooth; characters having honest and upfront dialog with each other is something that doesn’t happen frequently in romantic drama anime.  But as the story wrapped up it started to fall into the usual patterns of deceit, self pity and lack of compassion.  The very end of the 11^th episode was awesome though and had me hoping for a really dramatic finish.  Lo, the final episode was a bit flat…with the tease of possibly more to come.  There is a 2 part OAV set that came out which is unrelated to the series in general and deals with a secondary story line from before Haruto moved to Tokyo.  I have yet to view it but may write a review on that as well.

                Anyways, the series was disappointing; far from the quality I found in Suzuka and seemed to diverge a bit from the manga.  Perhaps the anime can redeem its self in the future, or this may be an omen about how the manga rolls.

                Neither the manga, nor the anime, have been licensed for release yet in North America.

The Girl who Leapt through Time - English Dub

Returning to the blog with my favorite anime movie seemed like a good place to pick up where I left off.  With the kids older and also apt to complain about having to read subtitles I figured it would be a good idea to show them this incredible piece of animation.    
                Quick recap: Makoto Konno is a 3^rd year high school student trying to figure out what to do with her life after graduation, but she’s a bit of a slacker.  All she cares about is idly flowing through her days concentrating on eating and hanging out with her two best friends, Kosuke and Chiaki.  After a day filled with unfortunate accidents and clumsiness Chiaki ends up getting the power to leap through time at her own will.  Hiding it from everyone but her aunt, she redoes anything she desires; second helpings at dinner, 5 hour long karaoke marathons, acing exams, etc.  But when those around her start to be hurt through her constant time leaping she begins to question her choices.   When she needs the ability to rewrite the past the most she discovers she can no longer use her ability.  Now she faces a loss that she doesn’t know if she can deal with, with or without the ability to leap.

                I absolutely love this movie.  I feel this is a great story for people who may not even be into anime.  Aside from the common themes found in school life anime and typical cultural reference points, this is a story that audiences not familiar with Japan can easily relate to.  It’s a story of lost love and the difficult choices one faces when growing up, which everyone has experienced.  Add in the fantastical idea of being able to redo periods of your life to change their outcomes to suit your wishes and you have even more relatable material.  The only thing keeping this from a wider audience is the fact its anime.  If it was redone live action with an American cast, it would probably see some modest box office returns, but wouldn’t be any sort of door buster.  The idea that it would take that kind of treatment to reach a wider audience is a bit sad and telling of xenophobic tendencies.

                With that said, after having only watching the fansub version of the movie since it came out and my distaste of English dubs I was mildly hesitant to watch this…especially in the first couple of minutes where the voice actors mangle Japanese words…like yukata and Makoto.  But once I got over the mangled words and went with the flow the voice acting proved its self to be pretty decent.  In fact it made me remember what it was like in the 80’s and 90’s and appreciate how far the industry has come and what its capable of doing.  Not saying that I will prefer the English dubs over the subs, but I think from now on I’ll be more open to the idea of a dub being quality as well.

                In short, whether the moves in dubbed English or Japanese it’s still my favorite anime movie and one of my favorite movies in general.  I’m a sucker for creative uses to time traveling and romantic comedies.  This is a movie you don’t have to be embarrassed about showing to your non-otaku friends.

The return of the Otaku Network

    After an extended absence Otaku Network will return with semi regular posts.  The volume of reviews and shows watched will not be any where near what it once was, partially due to the vast landscape of moe titles still being broadcast in Japan along with less time to devote to watching the few titles that appear interesting.  But, regardless the posts will return...it's been a few years and it doesn't seem like the landscape in anime has changed much...but lets go through the stuff that does look interesting to my tastes and see what gems can be found amid the rubble.

    What has significantly changed since this blog was last updated has been how non-Japanese audiences receive their anime.  When last we met Crunchyroll was a relatively new idea and seemed like a good start in the direction of providing new titles to other audiences in a way that would make the publishing companies happy and satisfy the fans desires close to the way the fansub community did.  On top of that with the advent of easy and affordable streaming options for your TV it makes it that much easier to access these programs.

    Long gone are the days of the 3rd gen tape dub fansub mail order circles.  In many ways that's a good thing, but the community that developed has also been lost and that is unfortunate.  I'm sure the idea of the weekly anime viewing clubs still exists but now that almost everything is right at your finger tips it doesn't seem as adventurous or meaningful as it used to.  But that's also me looking back wishfully.  While I miss the fansub community that used to exist, it's great to be able to access so many of these creations in a way that should financially benefit the creators...well in theory anyways.  Yet at the same time, with the mass die off of the fansub community we are at the whim of the distributors and mostly have access to what they want us to have access to these days.  It's getting harder to find older series' and some of the new ones that are not being supported internationally.  While the streaming services of Viz, Crunchyroll, Hulu and Netflix continue to produce the issue that made fansubbing vital in the first place...unfortunately their advent has killed off many of the fansub groups due to lack of support.

    So...after the rant, keep your eyes out for future posts, items on slate are; Kimi No Iru Machi, Usagi Drop, Genshikan 2 and a few other 2013 Summer and Fall series that don't involve characters from some galge.

Sashiburi!!

Suicide Club (live action movie)

After reading the manga for Suicide Club (Jisatsu Circle) I decided that it might not be a bad thing to check out the movie that it’s based off of, which came out in the earlier part of the decade and has become a cult hit.

    On a spring evening 54 junior and senior high school students lined up on a platform in Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, as the express train neared they held hands, smiled and jumped in it’s path on the count of three. All 54 students died and the police began investigating it, trying to determine whether it was a bizarre mass suicide or if there was something sinister behind it. As they investigate more and more high profile suicides take place and soon people begin talking about the Suicide Club. The police receive a phone call from a girl referring to herself as The Bat who directs them to a website that tracks the suicides…but the tally increases right before the suicides happen. At the scene of the larger events the police have been finding handbags with rectangular sections of flesh sown together and wrapped in a coil. They determine each rectangle is most likely from different people and begin searching through corpses and live people to try and find any clues to the suicides. As they get closer to the truth the idea of a mastermind behind them starts to take shape.

    So this movie is really horrible. It’s typical cheesy B grade schlock, bad effects and bad acting. For the first hour or so of this hour and forty minute film it is standard fare horror/police thriller. The cops are investigating the incidents, people are committing suicide, lumps of sewn together flesh keep popping up, and the suicides are gruesome and bloody. Then, something happens and it shifts all of a sudden to a small Rocky Horror type song routine. From there it goes into some bizarre existential self questioning like something Anno would do. Then it just kind of ends. I’m not worried about spoiling this movie for anyone, because honestly, don’t waste your time with this movie. The Bat really has no pivotal role in the movie, yet all of a sudden her character ushers in the change by being kidnapped by a gang of Harajuku weirdo’s who take her to their bowling alley of doom and claim they are the ones behind the suicides. It gets even worse when the leader of them, decked in leather and platform boots grabs a guitar and rocks out in a droopy J-rock goth-ballad. Then, they switch over to a girl who had been questioned by the cops after her boyfriend accidentally landed on her when he tried to commit suicide. She starts wondering what happened and goes to his room to look for clues. She has an epiphany and connects his suicide to this pre-teen pop band and does some amazing numerology to confirm her suspicions. The moment she discovers this, the boyfriends phone rings, she picks it up and on the other end is a wheezy adolescent kid who had been leading the police on earlier and tells her to show up at a concert hall for the truth. At which point she does…then ends up on stage in front of a bunch of adolescent kids and she goes through an existential rebirth, then she’s lead to some large duct work where she is planed by a guy wearing a gimp mask while the kids watch…fucking bizarre.

    But it doesn’t end there. One of the cops on the case notices the swatch of skin taken out of the girl, from her tattoo, and hunts her down to try and stop her from committing suicide. As he stakes out the train station a large group of school girls arrive and he fears the worst. Upon spotting her he does his best, in a non-committal, non-confrontational Japanese way, to stop her from killing herself. He grabs her hand, pleads with her to stop, she sneers, jerks her hand away and boards the train. Staring back at him with a look that says both, 'like I'm not that stupid' and 'follow me I know what’s going on'. But as the Japanese a prone to do, he stares after her like a lost dog and the movie ends as her train pulls away.

    The first part was ok. Some scenes took way too long, like a huge segment dealing with two night nurses who end up dying, that just dragged and dragged and dragged and was like a throw back homage to classic 70’s suspense horror films. Aside from that, the movie flowed. The cops kept trying to break the case, one cops family gets hit as everything comes to a head and you think with their renewed effort it’s all going to climax…then The Bat gets kidnapped by the Harajuku version of Dr. Frankenfurter and it all really goes to hell from there.

    So, don’t watch this horrible movie…there is a follow up that deals with The Bat and I am half way through that one…it’s almost 3 fricking hours long. So, once I get done with that I’ll review it…but I highly implore you to not see this horrible movie. Just goes to show you that a cult classic does not mean it's above being a pile of schlock.

El Hazard

In the mid and late 90’s a number of series’ came out under the El Hazard banner, here is a review of the original 7 part OAV that started it all.

    El Hazard follows geeky high school student Makoto Mizuhara as he discovers a sleeping woman buried beneath his school. He inadvertently wakes the woman named Ifurita, who claims to know him and says that she has been searching for him for a long time. She tells him that he must travel to the world of El Hazard and save it from destruction. He then finds himself in an unknown forest with one of his teachers, alcoholic chain smoking Masamachi Fujisawa. Right away they hear screams of distress from near by and rush to find Makoto’s classmate Nanami Jinnai being attacked by a group of large bug like creatures. The trio is rescued by humans who are from a nearby kingdom. They are brought to the palace and Makoto, given the canniness of appearance, is asked to pretend to be the missing princess, who has been captured by the leader of the bug like creatures, the Bugrom. The misplaced trio must now travel with a royal envoy to ask three elemental priestesses if they will allow them to use an ancient relic of war to defeat the Bugrom once and for all. At the same time Nanami’s brother, Katsuhiko has arrived in El-Hazard and joins forces with the Bugrom in order to obtain world domination. While Katsuhiko is happy where he is the others are desperately trying to find a way to return home, and hope the priestesses, who control the ancient technologies scattered through out the land, will know of a way to return them. Before they can complete their mission they must face off against Katsuhiko and the Bugrom horde as he unleashes a lost weapon of devastating power, the demon Ifurita.

    This series coincides with Tenchi Muyo and was even worked on by some of the same people. The art is very similar and where Tenchi is heavy on the harem anime, this one is only slightly harem. Like Tenchi is still follows a typical, hapless high school student as he is thrust into incredible events that he ultimately is the only one which can succeed with. Makoto and Tenchi are very similar and both exude ultra human abilities even though they remain humble and unassuming. The formula is well worn, but El Hazard is one of its best gems, at least the original OAV set. The art is good for the period and the writing is moderate. The humor is what really draws you in and in the end the emotional attachment keeps you there. This is a series, like Tenchi, that is designed for the male viewer. There are plenty of adolescent fantasies and sticky situations, well endowed women in skimpy clothing and as always the power of the unassuming adolescent boy to become the hero of the day and get the girl, the hot one…not the next door neighbor one. Yes, it is a tiring genre and story line, but El Hazard is well worth the pain. It contains some pure gems of comedic sequence and the story is entertaining in general. Apparently it was entertaining enough to pull another Tenchi move and retell it again as a TV show. The TV show was ok, I’ll review that eventually, but luckily they came out with two more series’ to follow up the original OAV, which will be reviewed at some point in the future as well.

    However, the original El Hazard is still good, worth a view, even though it has faded into the misty halls of semi popular anime. If you are a fan of the Tenchi Muyo franchise, it is a must. If you enjoy such titles as Photon, The Third or 3x3 Eyes this one will do nicely in your collection.

 

Mermaids and Spirals

Yet again, I have read another extremely short manga in horror variety. This one is the blatantly titled School Mermaid.

    The story deals with two love struck high school girls who have decided to sneak into their school at night in order to catch a mermaid from the pool. They discovered a book that told them if they eat the flesh of such a mermaid they will get the love of their dreams. They arm themselves with a kitchen knife and a crowbar and sneak into the school. After they chant the spell to unleash the mermaids though things change as their preconceptions don’t hold true to form.

    At first I thought, yawn; it’s just like Mermaid Forest but with puppy love instead of immortality. I figured I’d stick it out for all 3 issues worth of the story but by the end of it I was pleased with what happened. I was satisfied with the way it ended and the last chapter is the best. The art is bland, there is little to no character development, honestly what do you expect with 60 or so pages to tell the story in. It is quick and to the point and might even make a good movie…but they would have to add some filler to it. The execution was well done too. I can’t really say much more to make this post longer then the actual manga, but it was a good read.

On the same note I started a somewhat longer manga after reading the mermaid flesh of love one titled Uzumaki. No, for those Narutards out there, it has nothing to do with Naruto aside from the fact his last name, Uzumaki, references the spiral on his belly…I guess.

    Uzumaki is an interesting horror mystery story set in modern times in a small sea side Japanese town, where things aren’t quite right. A girl by the name of Kirie tells the story of how everyone around her began slipping into madness due to the subliminal attraction of spiral shapes in everything around them. Her boyfriend, Shuichi, was the first to notice any problem as he commutes to school outside of town and notices the ill affects the town has after being away from it. The horror starts when Shuichi’s father becomes so obsessed with spirals that he dies turning himself into one. From there it just escalates and soon everything in the town seems to be pressing down on them with the ominous spirals.

    Uzumaki literally means spiral. This manga was published around the turn of the century and produced a live action film in 2002. After reading 4 issues I am hooked into its trance. I will try and find the movie after I finish the manga as well. The best way to describe the feel of the story is to read something by H.P. Lovecraft and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if the mangaka responsible for it was influenced by the semi-respectable author of creepy insidious outer-worldly horror. But aside from that I will write no more until I have finished reading it.

Great Teacher Onizuka - Live Action Drama

This is a review on the 12 episode live action drama series that came out in 1998 based on the manga Great Teacher Onizuka.

    Eikichi Onizuka is an ex-motorcycle thug (bosozoku) who is pursuing his life long ambition of being a teacher. He applies for an open teaching position in a private high school but after attacking one of the teachers who is harassing a delinquent student he fears his chances have been eliminated. That is until the schools principle, which see’s a ray of hope in helping the school in Onizuka, hires him for the position. Onizuka isn’t off the hook so easily. He must prove to the principle that he is no longer the delinquent he was in his adolescent days and he must maintain professional and respectable relationships with the rest of the staff and the students. If he is to cause another incident of such magnitude he will be fired. On top of all of the challenges set before him the biggest is the home room he is given, the worst of the worst in the school. While not made up of delinquents, who Onizuka is capable of handling, his home room has the worst reputation out of the entire school and they have already dispatched a number of teachers. They are some of the smartest and more conniving students in the schools body. Onizuka must overcome their hatred for him and combat every plot and plan they put against him to maintain his position as teacher and to overcome his past.

    This was an incredibly popular TV drama in Japan, according to Wikipedia the final episode of the series held one of the highest viewer ratings ever in the country. This is probably one of the better done dramas out there from Japan, which tends to have horrid production abilities. GTO is also the best J-Drama I have ever seen and I was disappointed when it was over with (even though 2 movie length specials aired afterwards). The best thing about the show, aside from the fun story, is the actor who plays Onizuka. He is energetic and contorts his face in interesting ways. I couldn’t really get into the anime version due to the voice being different and the animation not tapping into the extent of what the live action version did…which is odd because the anime came out after the drama.

    Regardless of that, the live action is my favorite installment for this interesting high school juvenile delinquent manga. Onizuka in the drama isn’t as brutal or hard as he is in the anime and manga, but he still dispenses his own form of wisdom upon his good for nothing students. It’s like the Japanese version of Dangerous Minds but with genetic homogeneity and lack of firearms…and well a bunch of other stuff too. While everything falls into place nicely its fun to watch the events take place and you get that warm squishy feeling in the bottom of your stomach that says…it’s ok, there is hope for the lost nation of Japan…if only it had more resolute and strong willed independent thinkers like Eikichi Onizuka…then the final credits role and you remember that this was all just some mangakas’ imagination retranslated to work in 50 minute installments on network TV to bring in cash from car dealers and 24 hour convenience stores hawking their seasonal goods.

    While stuck in a glossy fairytale land it is a fun and enjoyable series to watch. The plots and schemes the shit head children cook up are interesting but what is more entertaining is how Onizuka overcomes them to not only save his face but to convert the haterz. This is a show that anyone can get into who is remotely a fan of Japanese TV, anime or otherwise. You don’t have to have any background knowledge in the manga or be a fan of anime in general to like this show…it’s a broad sweeper in the realm of Japan-o-files and well worth the 12 hours or so to watch it. The special and movie that followed are ok, but with all the changes (Onizuka goes off to a different school) it just isn’t the same story.

Suicide Club (manga)

In the search for yet more interesting and short manga I breezed through the 6 issue horror, current events shocker Suicide Club (Jisatsu Circle) based on the movie of the same name.

    During the evening commute a group of high school and middle school girls line up on the edge of a train platform in Tokyo’s Shinjuku station and with smiles on their faces, count to 3 and jump in front of the oncoming train in a mass suicide. One girl named Saya survives the incident and is miraculously mostly unharmed. Even before the incident Saya was shunned by people in school and lived a miserable life. Her only friend Kyoko tried to reconnect with her after the incident but is pushed aside by her. Kyoko hadn’t paid as much attention as she should have a few years earlier when Saya was having problems. After her father lost his job she started to sell her body and mutilate herself. When she felt alone at that time she discovered the love and wisdom of a seemingly enlightened student named Mitsuko. Saya along with other hurt and lost girls worshiped the words and wisdom of Mitsuko leading up to the mass suicide orchestrated by her. After the tragedy Kyoko soon notices that Saya behaves differently than before and girls are starting to flock around her like they did around Mitsuko.

    I have not seen the movie yet, did know about it, but will have to put it on my list now to watch. This was an interesting manga, at least in the plot or general concept. The delivery was a bit shoddy, the artwork was pretty bad (all of the characters looked like mutants) and there really wasn’t a lot of detail put into the backgrounds. You can tell it was cobbled together pretty quickly as it was commissioned by the creator of the movie and released around the same time. This would be like the manga version of the shoddy video game that coincide a movie release to bring in some more cash. The mangaka who penned it wanted to copy the movie exactly, but the original creator wanted him to take a different spin on the story. I’m not sure of all the similarities beyond the initial mass suicide at the train station but the manga has a supernatural side to it. When it comes to the dark side of Japan, I am increasingly desensitized. I’m used to the idea that there is a whole flock of teenage girls who sell themselves for as meaningless a thing as CD money. I’m used to the idea of bullying being incredibly problematic in Japanese schools and suicide and self mutilation a big teenage past time…just like it tends to be in America.

    On the other hand the supernatural aspect of the story seemed a little hokey. It wasn’t anything new and honestly it felt like a subplot from Vampire Princess Miyu minus the supernatural fight sequence and all. I know Japan is supposed to have this knack with horror but I have never really been bothered by any horror from Japan, and even love watching it, where I refuse to watch horror from America because it scares the crap out of me. It might just be a cultural thing, where different ideological mysteries affect people from different cultures differently (for lack of a better word). So, back on track here, it isn’t a shocking story or concept, to me anyways. It more seemed like a minor blip in the realm of Dark Asia that I have grown all too accustomed to.

   It wasn’t a bad read, after all it took me like 20 minutes, so it didn’t feel like I had wasted my time doing so and it offered me another review to do. I do want to watch the movie, as I had mostly forgotten about it and am now intrigued to see what happened in the movie.

     You would probably enjoy this if you watched the movie; I read that the manga makes more sense. You might also enjoy this is you enjoyed Hell Girl, Vampire Princess Miyu and Ghost Hunt. I think I need to watch more Moryo no Haku now and get some interesting super natural horror going again.

UPDATE: The movie was meh, I've seen less cheesy out of classic Hong Kong kung-fu theater time.

Manhole and Alive

After finishing the epic 20^th/21^st Century Boys manga, I needed to move on to some quicker titles. The first one I tackled was Manhole and the second one was Alive, both are similar in that they are seinen horror/mystery titles. For the sake of their brevity I decided to combine each manga’s review in one posting.

    Manhole is a 29 issue seinen police drama, horror story that takes place in modern Japan by little known mangaka Tetsuya Tsutsui. The story begins as a naked, disorientated and bleeding man crawls out of a sewer and begins shambling through a crowded shopping district before bumping into a college student, hitting his head in the resulting fall and dying. Upon investigating this bizarre event the local police discover it is more unusual than it first appeared.

    The ‘victim’ in the attack was a troubled man in his 20’s who had been sent to a reform clinic by his frightened parents. The clinic said they had a therapy for their son that would end his gambling and violent rages. As detectives investigate this ‘clinic’ the coroner discovers that what had really killed the man was a blood born parasite which had bored through his eye and had begun eating his brain, most notably the part associated with emotions. They widen their search for the college student because the ‘victim’ had spit blood on him and the authorities now fear an outbreak of this deadly and rare parasite. Soon though, they discover that the outbreak is exactly what the person who infected the ‘victim’ wanted. Now the police and the ministry of health must rush to contain the parasite and stop the madman from unleashing more of them on the city.

    This is an interesting concept and is well drawn and executed. I am unfamiliar with Tsutsui but he is very detailed, especially when it comes to anatomy. While short, you get a firm understanding of the story and a feel for the main characters. This manga could easily be made into an entertaining summer blockbuster movie. It has all the requirements for a live action film that would draw a modest crowd. Edit it a little bit so it flows better on film and you’re all set to go. While it does fit into that category I still enjoyed it, it reminded me more of 28 Days Later than Independence Day. It is a creepy story and it had me thinking the night after I finished it as I lay in bed, jumping at boogie men. Nature can really mess you up if you run into it in a foreign environment, or if someone purposely introduces it. While the story was well done I have a few issues with some of how it ended…it really is primed for Hollywood, but I would definitely watch the movie version. This is a semi-mature story dealing with some moderately adult content. There is a little bit of nudity and some well detailed bodily harm. Yet in some ways it also reminded me of the Saw franchise, which are not for the weak spirited or immature.

Alive is a very short horror seinen title by mangaka Takahashi Tsutomu, who I have never heard of, but has done the following as well; Tetsuwan Girl, Bakuon Retto and Blue Heaven.

    The story follows Yashiro Tenshu who is about to be executed for murdering 5 people, one of whom was his girlfriend. As he approaches the death chamber he is offered the chance to live by a secretive agency. He chooses to take their offer and is transported with another death row inmate to a secret underground facility. They are given two rules, they can have anything they request unless forbidden and they can not leave the room they are in. Yashiro questions whether he has truly earned a new lease on life as his roommate drinks the time away. One day they notice that one of the walls is partially open and on the other side is a beautiful naked woman. The roommate starts talking to her and she tells him that if he wants to get to her he has to kill Yashiro. As time goes on the tension between the two captives increases as they debate the truth behind her words. Yoshiro only cares about escaping this new prison and finding out the reason for being brought to the room with the other murderer.

    This is a pretty short manga, at 10 issues, and near the end I wasn’t sure if it would actually end and not just get cut off. It did end though, which was a relief. This is an ok manga, the art isn’t the best, reminded me of styles found in the early 90’s or late 80’s. Looked a bit like Crying Freeman at times. It was a quick read, just over 30 minutes total time, so don’t expect anything ground breaking or earth shattering. Yet this one incorporates a supernatural aspect into its story and once again we consider what happened when things are taken out of their natural inhabitants. The delivery wasn’t anything fresh or new, the characters didn’t grow or become better people and you only learned the minimum background information needed to get the whole picture. At one point I feared the story would take a shonen adventure turn, with Yashiro wandering the world as an assassin for the government, always running from his past. Honestly, for its length you’re really not going to regret reading it. If it were some 300 issue epic series, like something akin to Fist of the North Star I’d try and dissuade people from checking it out…but it’s only 200 some odd pages and a lot of them are filled with just art. So as with Manhole if you liked Elfen Lied or if you liked Crying Freeman check this extremely short story about humans lack of self restraint. This series really reminded me of all the old seinen titles from the 80’s…

Cromartie High the movie

In 2006 the live action theatrical release version of the bizarre and cult like comedy manga/anime Cromartie High was birthed upon the world.

    The live action movie, like the manga and the anime, follows first year high school student Takashi Kamiyama as he enrolls in Cromartie High School for Delinquents. While he is a modest and average student he enrolled in such a bottom of the barrel school to be with his only friend from grade school, who subsequently didn’t even pass the entrance exam for Cromartie. Stuck with no options now that he was enrolled Kamiyama does his best to blend in with Tokyo’s worst delinquents. He quickly makes friends in his class full of hoodlums and even gains their respect. While he is physically unimpressive and mild mannered everyone assumes he is the toughest thug around since no one that appears to be so timid would ever step foot in the school. He soon uses this newly acquired respect to try and shape up the school for the better. He soon gathers a small band of followers; his two real friends form the school and other classmates, one being a gorilla and another being a cross between Freddy Mercury and Hard Gay.

    His efforts are challenged though when a new student arrives and attempts to take over the school. No one pays any attention to him though and the schools stability and possible improvement arn’t put into jeopardy until a band of aliens straight out of Planet of the Apes show up with plans to turn all the students at Cromartie into their mindless slaves to use for world domination.

    This may be one of the funniest live action movies to come out of Japan, that is if you are a fan of childish slapstick and crude humor (which I am from time to time). The entire concept of Cromartie High is its ridiculousness. Every character in the school is a caricature of absurdity. The most notable characters are; Mechazawa, a robot that no one knows is a robot (with the exception of Kamiyama), Gorilla, the aforementioned gorilla and Freddy, the aforementioned Freddy Mercury leather boy clone. All of the other characters are colorful as well, such as the one that ends up eating all of Kamiyama’s pencils or the hijacker who stands in for the first years strongest student after he gets stranded but no one knows it’s the wrong guy because the hijacker always wears a luchadore mask. As stated previously the comedy is inane and childish, but is still incredibly funny. There is little to no coherency with the movie as the anime and manga are both vignette based. One segment flows into another with only a semblance of connectedness. The most important thing about the entire Cromartie story in any form is satire and twisted homage to many things from pop culture, most particularly 70’s rock and wrestling. The name of the school comes from the last name of an American pro baseball player who because famous while playing in Japan. When it comes to Japans movie production things are more often then not B-grade, that aspect helps this movie and it is faithful in reproducing the feel and look of the manga and anime, if not the exact story.

    This movie is perfect for anyone who already enjoys this series or for ones that like inane comedies and childish slapstick such as Ping Pong Club or Bobobo Bo Bo Bobo.