manga – Cubilone's Dimension

REVIEW: PLUTO

PLUTO: Naoki Urasawa x Ozamu Tezuka, Band 001 by Naoki Urasawa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a review for the whole series, not just Pluto #1.

I read it on my smartphone. What a time to be alive!

There’s this I’ve noticed with manga, anime and how I take them in: very often, such series as Pluto, or Neon Genesis Evangelion while we’re at it, they start off strong and interesting, they throw you in well-crafted worlds with characters I want to know more about. The art is captivating and undoubtedly masterful. By the end, however, the plot’s typically so messed up I find it difficult to keep caring. And that’s precisely what happened with me and Pluto. Should I give up on “serious” manga?

That said, I concede that Pluto portrays a society where artificial intelligence has penetrated human society quite convincingly. A killer robot that’s left its (his?) past life behind and just wants to play the piano? Now that’s something I want to read more about.

Also, what’s with Urasawa and Germany? Monster also took place there and it seemed kind of arbitrary that it had to.

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REVIEW: YUKIKO’S SPINACH

Yukiko’s Spinach by Frédéric Boilet

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a manga recommended by Daphne a million and a half years ago. I read it in one single-hour sitting on my Kindle, surrounded by unknown Bulgarians in a hotel in Sandanski. They were sleeping in different beds.

I’ll be brief and to-the-point: this was self-reference taken to the extreme. I like it when artists play around with these things, when they break the fourth wall, for example, or whatever the equivalent for texts might be – I’m not feeling creative enough to come up with something better than the incredibly lame “burning the press” – but Monsieur Boilet went over the top. You did, Frédéric. I admit: it was interesting in a way, but in the end I couldn’t help but get the feeling that, were the veneer of pretentious self-reference, such as the sketches, supposedly the inspiration of this comic book, to be removed, there would be nothing left.

No. There would be something left: the small details that made me want to visit Japan (yawn, right?); the cute observations the artist made of Yukiko and masterfully put onto paper, most memorably the mole on her face that reminded him of the geography of some islands in the Pacific the name of which escapes me right now, and its art style, which had me wondering all along: “How did the guy actually make this? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” The answer came at the end as part of the story itself. Or did it?

And to think I usually like this kind of stories… Alas: while reading it, I made the shuddering realisation that, if I chose to write a story or make a comic about something that took place in my own life, a few years ago or maybe even today I might have chosen this oh-so-mysterious-I-wonder-what-really-happened! style of self-reference. *looks around uncomfortably*

But seriously: this looked amazing on the Kindle (see above). Even though I didn’t enjoy the story so much, I would still recommend checking it out if you have one.

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Review: Naoki Urasawa presenta: 20th Century Boys, Libro 1: Amigo

Naoki Urasawa presenta: 20th Century Boys, Libro 1: Amigo by Naoki Urasawa

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Manga + Kindle + aprender idiomas = ¡Win! (¡Victoria!)

Estoy enamorado de verdad de la idea de leer manga en mi Kindle, ¡y gratis también! El primer que he probado es 20th Century Boys de Naoki Urasawa, creador de Monster, que me avergüenza decir que nunca lo acabé. Algún día, quizás, quizás… Por lo que conseguí entender, porque una de las razones que lo leo el manga en español es para aprender palabras nuevas y practicar y por eso es claro que no entiendo todo, esta obra se ve muy prometedora. Solo espero que esta vez la leeré hasta el final. No tengo nada de paciencia con series muy largas…

A propósito, no sé qué es la mejora manera de escribir críticas para mangas. No voy criticar todos los libros, ¡eso significaria 22+ criticas por solo un manga! No, debe que haber otra manera… A ver.

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Review: Clover Omnibus

Clover Omnibus by CLAMP

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read the other reviews on Goodreads before setting out to write this (as I always do for good or ill) and it seems that we only got 2/3 of what Clover was originally meant to be. Maybe that’s why it’s nonsensical. The “written word” part of it is just that: incoherent. The lyrics from that song, in 110% cliché anime style (i.e generic song that has the words love, happiness, forever, together, alone, tears and heart mixed, sautéed in soy sauce and served on the spot) repeated ad nauseam was quite annoying and the plot in general didn’t exist at all. Yes, I’ve concluded that it can’t be my fault that almost all anime/manga plots fly right over my head. This one in particular… wow. It was so irrelevant or so it seemed, that I think it would have been better if I had “read” it in Japanese (or whatever other verb you can use to describe at least trying to read something that’s in a foreign language and you by default only pay attention to the shapes of the letters/characters/kana).

The reason I’m stressing this of course is that this tome is just beautiful and I can imagine the aesthetics take a hit when the kana and kanji are forced to be replaced by latin characters. The steampunk/clockwork angel & sparrow thing worked well and was pretty to look at on the experimentally laid out pages that flow in lightning speeds. While I enjoyed the visual feast, I must confess that this style in the end is just not for me.

Even like that, I ended up liking it and it’s probably because some parts reminded me very strongly of my girlfriend who’s the one who came to my house one day and out of the blue just left Clover on my desk. If it wasn’t for her, I would have probably never touched it. But, sentimental a critic as I am, my feelings governed these keystrokes. I feel strangely complete writing this.

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