Manga | Rebecca Thomas Designs

A definite theme

Mar 312008

I decided to combine this week’s link dump with this month’s book dump since April starts tomorrow. When I started gathering everything to enter it, I noticed an odd relationship between most of my links. Let’s see if you can find it.

We’ll start with the links…all two of them!

College students making the grade online, in class- It’s great that educational technology is improving students’ grades in courses. My concern is, are they demonstrating any actual learning? I work with kids day in, day out. A crazy number of the kids are supposed to have some sort of short-term memory issue because they never seem to know anything (makes you want to raise a kid up here, just in case it’s the water). What’s really happening is that they’re cramming for tests, and then doing nothing to actually shift that knowledge into their memory at all. So we end up teaching the exact same topic (I often use the exact same material, just to make my point) to the exact same kid, and they have absolutely no clue they’ve seen it before. Grades are one thing, retention is something completely different.
Cartoon Network has no plans for One Piece return- I’m sharing this one because I’m a jerk. 4Kids lost three properties in 2006- one it deserved to lose (don’t hate me), one that simply finished (4Kids does still control it), and one that was literally pirated away by another company that 4Kids has a distribution partnership with. Granted, One Piece often had fans yelling and screaming at 4Kids, but still. If you ever want to know how 4Kids lost this poor embattled property, google “Funimation One Piece”. It’s completely irrelevant now. After only six months of fans yelling and screaming about the new voice actors, Cartoon Network has decided to stay out of it. (You’d think after what happened with Pokemon, these companies would learn that moving away from 4Kids voice actors is never a popular idea.)

And now, after spending nearly every free moment in January and February reading, I kind of gave myself March off. The list, as a result, is short.

Mamotte Lollipop, Volume 1- My students are overly fascinated with my love of anime and manga, so they’re always asking me if I’ve ever heard of titles. One of them, easily an otaku, came in a couple of weeks ago and dropped two manga on my desk. I hadn’t ever heard of this one, and could easily see why. It was scary looking (at least from where I was sitting). It was brightly colored and looked very girly. I don’t trend to to do girly, but the student insisted I read it, so I did. The story wasn’t much better than the cover, sadly enough.
The Gentlemen’s Alliance +, Volume 1?- This one had been previewed in Shojo Beat not too long ago, and I wasn’t impressed with it then, either. It was far more readable than Mamotte! Lollipop, though. Because I didn’t outright reject it, the student intends to make me read the rest of the story. (Since she has the attention span of a ferret, I’m hoping she’ll forget.)
Vampire Knight, Volume 4- One of my favorite manga at the moment. This volume was particularly…interesting. There’s a school ball, and you get a definite Yuki-Kaname moment. But the last half of the the volume…whoa! (It really got to me when I read these chapters in Shojo Beat, too.) The bonus story made very little sense, though.
The Absolute Sandman, Volume 1- I’m not sure why, but I keep trying to read Neil Gaiman’s books. It’s like I’m terrified that my geek creds are in danger if I can’t find one I can actually get through. For the time being, though, I think I’ve decided that I’m just not in the right place in my life to appreciate his work, and I’m letting it go for now. If that makes me less of a geek…well…then it makes me less of a geek. There’s not much I can do about that.

All right, did you find the theme?

Going in order is weird

animation, reading View Comments

Jan 052008

For those who might be stumbling across this blog for the first time, I like cartoons. Actually, I prefer to say i like animation, because I watch cartoons, anime, and full-length animated features.

That second one is the one driving me crazy most days. Normally, I find a dub that I enjoy and go hunting for the translated manga. Sometimes, a friend will tell me to watch an anime, and I will. I’ll like it so much I hunt down the manga. Occasionally, someone will recommend a manga to me, and then I’ll find the anime somewhere weird.

Strangely, I’ve dealt with Death Note in what some would consider to be a more traditional order, and it just feels weird to me. I’d seen the manga several times while I was reading Descendants of Darkness. One day, I picked up one of the volumes out of sheer curiosity and read the back. It seemed sort of interesting, but thumbing through the book didn’t get much reaction so I put the volume back. Then, Shojo Beat had a small blurb on it, and I decided to give it a second shot.

I read the entire series last year. My roommates went and found a fansub of the anime so I could see it. (I watched all but the last two episodes because both files had issues.) When Cartoon Network started showing the dub last fall, I was so excited. It’s fun watching it, already knowing how everything’s going to go and thinking to myself, “You know. these voices really don’t work.” My best friend has voiced that complaint with quite a few anime, and I finally understand that feeling.

Somehow, though, I’m managing to not get up in arms over the anime, subbed or dubbed, even though I read a translation of the manga first. I wonder what kind of anime/manga fan that makes me.

Fun with manga!

teaching, writing View Comments

Jun 052007

All I really need to know about manga, I learned from this ANN announcement.

Graphic novels from countries that are Japan are called “world manga”. Now I wonder what cartoons from other countries are called. (I watch one out of Italy every weekend. I wonder if it’s just a cartoon, or if it’s something else.)

I knew that some places translate manga and put both the Japanese and the English there to help English speakers learn Japanese. (My best friend actually threatened me with one a couple of years ago.) Now, there are going to be world manga that will be designed to help increase students’ vocabulary for the SAT. (As someone who has recently taught portions of the verbal side of an SAT prep class, I can tell you that’s no small feat. Does make me wonder if they need writers, though…)

It also says that the graphic novel community has figured out they can be educational and retain their entertaining nature without giving up anything. I can think of an entertainment company or two here in the States that might consider taking a page from that book…

Girls like a little action, too!

animation, gaming, reading View Comments

Apr 202007

An interesting survey of Japanese girls has uncovered something I think is fairly obvious- girls like action stories.

Manga is divided into two classifications- shounen (boys’ manga) and shoujo (girls’ manga). Shounen is typically characterized by a lot of action and fighting. Shoujo is marked by touchy-feely moments driving the story.

While I tend to go more for shounen anime, I’m realizing my own manga collection is rather decidedly shoujo. I think I own a grand total of two shounen titles (of the eight titles I collect). The series I’m reading through the library is also shounen. The majority of my collection is shoujo (although I think one of them could just as easily be shounen). I even read a shoujo manga magazine (which is directly responsible for three of the shoujo titles I collect).

In all fairness, though, Shounen Jump is apparently home to two of the shounen titles I enjoy (and I watch the dubbed anime for two other titles they feature). So, I guess I’m a girl who walks the line between shounen and shoujo.

Recognizable spines

books View Comments

Nov 112006

I read a lot of manga. Well, it’s a lot by my standards, at least. My best friend reads a ton more than I do, but it’s also her fault I read them to begin with. She introduced me to my favorite series Fruits Basket. Granted, I’d already read quite a bit of Ranma 1/2 in my college years, but I didn’t actually start reading them until Kristen started throwing things at me. Then I started reading one for a favorite cartoon (because I refuse to call Yu-Gi-Oh an anime, even though I own a good third of the series in the original Japanese).

Kristen even got me to start reading a magazine that serializes six manga a chapter at a time. (I’m embarrassed to realize I don’t know what these are called.) It’s introduced me to a few new faves. My favorite of the six, Godchild, was replaced a few months back by what ended up being another favorite, but I was upset at the loss of the first one.

When they started releasing the volumes for Godchild, I started collecting them so I could read the entire story. I also have a manga based on an a very heart-wrenching novel that lives on the bookshelf right next to my Godchild volumes. I just recently started collecting another favorite title, Absolute Boyfriend, but it hasn’t made its way to the manga shelf yet.

From what I can tell, Viz and its subsidiary company Shounen Jump both create covers where the spine is visually distinctive. Shojo Beat, another subsidiary of Viz, doesn’t. When I look over at the bookshelf closest to my bed, I can see where all of my Fruits Basket (Tokyo Pop) volumes are, I can see where my Descendants of Darkness volumes start and end. I am aware of where my Shojo Beat collection starts and stops, but couldn’t tell you from here whether Socrates in Love is before or after Godchild. The spines look identical to each other.

I’m so used to walking up to a book shelf and picking up a book without any serious thought because I know what the spine looks like, and I’m almost mad that Shojo Beat has robbed me of that opportunity. Distinctive spines are a part of what make owning books so much fun.