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MakiManga: Neon Genesis Evangelion volumes 1-10

April 12, 2008

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Dear 8 pounds 6 ounces baby Rei... new born... not even spoken a word yet...

When I first laid eyes on Sadamoto Yoshiyuki’s manga version of Neon Genesis Evangelion, I didn’t really think much of it.  I was mostly busy trying to locate volumes of Battle Angel Alita at the time, so Evangelion wasn’t much more than a blip on the radar.  When I learned there was an anime adaptation, I got my hands on some bootlegs, and everything changed.

It may come as a curiosity, given the way I feel about the anime, that I only started collecting the manga a month ago.  Although it initially ran concurrently with the series, the manga has far outlived it; as of last year’s volume 10, it has only just begun the final story arc.  With long stretches of time between releases, I had lost confidence that Sadamoto could maintain a coherent narrative, let alone one that would live up to the anime.

Now that I’ve read all the available English volumes, I can confidently say that Evangelion belongs as much to Sadamoto as it does Anno Hideaki.  What Sadamoto brings to the franchise is a more level-headed (if desolate) tone—one that isn’t as prone to the esoteric outcries of Anno’s work.  He has made the story his own, yet it is still undeniably Eva.  And that makes the manga worthwhile.

Sadamoto’s art, although not quite matured beyond the awkwardly stiff character poses of years past, is still appealing.  Each page shows his fidelity to the aesthetic of the ruined world, the loving care with which he draws his characters, and his excellent eye for framing scenery.

The real surprise, though, is Sadamoto’s skill as a storyteller (and the excellent translation by Viz).  The story can still be stubbornly opaque, but the author’s voice is omnipresent—always a boon for manga.  Frequently, the dialogue is even better than in the series.  The characters feel more fleshed out (particularly Kaworu), although Asuka sticks out as being a little too over-the-top.

This series is has stretched on for ages, and will probably still be around when the next Rebuild film arrives.  I’m anxious to see how Sadamoto will end the story—whether he’ll adapt The End of Evangelion, or come up with something altogether original.  I hope it’s the latter, because it would be a shame to let something this good end in the shadow of another man’s work.

(Archive)

Cinema File: Kill Zone (SPL: Sha Po Lang)

April 10, 2008

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SPL (2005) stars Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung—a clash that perhaps is not as anticipated Jackie Chan vs. Jet Li or Bruce Lee vs. Tony Jaa (wouldn’t that be epic?), but seems like a good idea nonetheless.  The only question is, how good is the film around the action?

Just kidding, nobody gives a shit about that.  Actually, Simon Yam is the star, but he kind of becomes utterly irrelevant because all you want to see is Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung kick the everloving shit out of each other.

I’m amazed that Sammo Hung could still appear to be able to somewhat hold his own against Donnie Yen.  You don’t see too many fights between a normal sized guy and a fat guy, so it’s at least visually distinct.  But the action, for the most part, isn’t really exciting.  I mean, yeah, the movie is somewhat successful at building anticipation, but there’s no real payoff—party because of the way the fight ends, but mostly because you get the feeling that one of the stars is past his prime.  I’ll let you guess which star I’m talking about.

SPL isn’t a bad movie, but I feel that it doesn’t make the best use of its stars, and it leaves you with an overwhelming feeling of negativity.  I’m not saying all movies need a happy ending, but this one could have at least not ended in such a random way.  You get the feeling that the writers came up with a bunch of concepts for action scenes, and then realized at the last minute that they needed a plot.  This becomes painfully evident when Donnie Yen’s character comes in, and his entire subplot is in a self contained bubble of ass-beating violence.

Why was Simon Yam in this movie at all?  The story essentially goes like this: he needs to take out Sammo Hung’s character, but instead of doing it himself (thus adding an emotional layer and giving him proper motivation), he simply puts the task on Donnie Yen.  Well, at least now you won’t go into SPL with any pretense of this being a story-driven movie.

SPL is a very well-shot movie (directed by Wilson Yip), and is proof that Hong Kong has no trouble with cinematography.  The sets are quite good, and the metropolitan look suits its modern aesthetic well.  Technically, SPL holds up to high budget Hollywood.  All that’s left is to raise the quality of writing.

(Archive)

Peregrine Newtype Tribute DVD: Date Unknown

March 26, 2008

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Part 10: Gensomaden Saiyuki

The narration starts off by saying that in the past, humans and demons coexisted.  Well I guess that means they won’t for much longer!  In case you’re wondering, Saiyuki is based on Xiyou Ji, Journey to the West.  It’s a road movie, a buddy-monk comedy about a man and a monkey as they face hardship together, and learn the value of friendship and loyalty.  It’s essentially Shanghai Noon, where the monkey is Jackie Chan.

Well, that’s Xiyou Ji (fun fact: it was followed up by the lesser known Xiyou Knights).  Saiyuki injects a certain amount of wild west-ness to the story.  There’s something about the aesthetic that doesn’t work for me.  I think I came to this realization when Cho Hakkai says, “there’s some serious spiritual shit going down.”  Somebody get these writers a Pulitzer.

Oh BTW, Hakkai has a dragon that transforms into a Jeep.

So anyway, in this episode, we learn that some serious spiritual shit is going on in India, so Sanzo has to recruit a plucky crew of 3 to go and stop it.  Of course, all 4 of our lead characters are too cool to look like they’re interested in what’s going on.  I guess this type of characterization would work in the ’90s when the series debuted.

Overall, this episode neither impressed nor repulsed me.  It does what most first episodes do; it just... exists.  I can say that this is definitely a bishounen series, for those of you who are into yaoi-fodder.  Personally, it’s the kind of series I’d watch only if a trusted source vouched for its quality.

(Archive)

Indifferent Newtype Tribute DVD: November 2003

March 24, 2008

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Part 9: Pretear

After a week and a half of nothing, I want to deliver a newspost that’s really worth the wait.  In order to do that, I have to watch an anime that really captures the imagination, that really excites me in ways I shouldn’t talk about on the internet.  When that happens, I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, all I got to watch was fuckin’ Pretear.

Let’s run through a checklist of magical girl cliches:

• Androgynous male characters: CHECK
• Central character doesn’t know she’s special: CHECK
• Central character is a princess: CHECK
• Central princess wears a sailor suit: CHECK
• Cute animal mascot: CHECK
• Tentacled monsters: CHECK
• Tragedy occurred in the past: CHECK
• Central princess has a magical wand: MISSING

7 overdone cliches out of 8 isn’t bad.  OH WAIT IT IS.  I can’t even be bothered with making graphics for this.  On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being a sucky first episode and 10 being an awesome first episode, Pretear gets an i.  That would be i, as in the square root of negative one, as in the imaginary fucking number because I just didn’t care.

(Archive)

Misguided Newtype Tribute DVD: November 2003

March 12, 2008

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Part 8: Saint Seiya

I think everyone should watch Saint Seiya, especially if they were born after the 80s.  Then everyone could know the pain, anguish, and misery that I subjected myself to for 25 minutes of my precious life.  The first warning sign is that the writers don’t seem to know what the word “saint” means.  According to the dictionary, a saint is a person who has been canonized, having demonstrated outstanding virtue.  Try as I might, I could not find a definition involving “spiky haired loser with shitty armor and space powers.”  While we’re on the subject of things the writers don’t know, I don’t think they know what “cloth” is either.  I’m no linguist, but I’m pretty sure the word “cloth” is not a synonym for “giant metal horse.”

The roffles don’t stop there, I’m afraid.  Seiya, the main character, is in a fighting tournament for sainthood (again, there are semantic problems here).  Basically, to use his powers, he has to “explode the cosmos inside him.”  At first, I just thought this was what men did using lube and tissues.  Apparently, there’s a more technical definition of “exploding the cosmos” in Saint Seiya: if you can’t defeat someone, make a bunch of stupid hand gestures, and then you’ll be at your full power.  This is very much like the nebulous “powering up” that is done for long stretches of time in Dragon Ball Z, except it involves less grunting.  The theory behind it?  Since I’m made of atoms, and this rock is also made of atoms, I can destroy the rock.  I’m not even joking.  Now I’ve taken enough college level physics to understand this basic fact: a rock is a lot fucking harder than my hand.

Saint Seiya is a period piece, really.  It harkens back to the days of the original Star Trek, where everything was shit and all the inconsistencies were explained away with fancy sounding nonsense.  Saint Seiya, however, is missing something that Star Trek had: William Shatner.  So when Seiya says something like “No man can fight a woman with his full spirit,” you think, “that sexist son of a bitch!”  If it was Shatner saying those lines, you’d laugh it off and say, “oh that silly Bill, always the romantic.”  I think the dumbest moment, by far, is when Seiya gets hit really hard, and he strikes the requisite pose of getting hit and being in pain.  Then his companion Marin apparently communicates with him telepathically or something, and the scene fades back to real time.  Except Seiya holds the pose, mouth agape, hair fluttering and all, until he is interrupted by the enemy.  All of this makes me think that if I could travel back in time to 1986, I could single handedly conquer the entire world because every time I hit someone, they’d strike a pose for 20 minutes.

(Archive)