As a short manga story/anime OVA within Takahashi’s Rumic World series, I watched Fire Tripper‘s OVA when I was quite young, and got the chance to read the manga when I was in Junior High School. For a long time Fire Tripper stood out to me as a happy end story, and a series that I liked more than Ranma 1/2 romance complications. This is definitely a pre-cursor to Inu Yasha‘s own ending.
Suzuko is a high school aged girl that finds herself thrown back to a feudal Japan, with her neighbor Shuhei. She meets a warrior known as Shukumaru, and her life is forever changed with this meeting. You can read the complete spoilers to the series on Wikipedia, or even watch the short OVA on Youtube.
People can criticize it on being a very superficial story, but if you ask me, what makes this as a story that stood out in my mind. It is the courage on how characters definitely adapted to where they lived. Giving up a life in a specific time or area takes a lot of courage. But then how can a person mature or grow up? Likeliness of this story ever happening in reality is quite impractical, for for time paradox fans, this is a type of story to see.
Published during the 1980′s, there is Maison Ikkoku a romantic comedy between college ronin, Yusaku Godai, and Manager Kyoko Otonashi. Their relationship spans over a couple of years, and it is purely my opinion, but Maison Ikkoku is the shojo romance for the male otaku. It was a pretty sappy drama that was a complete trial for me to get through, because when I was reading volume 11, (The two leads were in a Japanese inn together, and they completely didn’t confess the truth) At that point I looked over at the remaining four volumes. I literally groaned. That was how tedious I felt this reading was, since I am not as fond of this type of story. Never underestimate the sacrifice of time I would do in order to pay respect to Takahashi and to prevent of not being mowed over by fanboys. Plus one of the local libraries had all 15 volumes, that took me the length of time from even before Aria MMF to have completed recently. (I reacted a bit on twitter.)
Takahashi writes from the beginning that Godai had a love at first sight with Kyokko, but since he is a typical inexpressive Japanese male. It is really hard to give opportunities to him, unless he proves himself in episodes as Takahashi has written for him. He had a typical college career. Many of Takahshi male leads are always misunderstood, embroiled into a love triangle, or becomes a chick magnet. So Godai was typical Takahashi male lead. I got pointed out that Kyoko is also an earlier tsundere type, and while at first I thought that she was pretty perfect, I can definitely say that from some few glimpse of emotions I see in Kyoko, she is quite similar to Sister Angela.
But the length of time, and the continuing boy girl issues that Kyoko and Godai irked me. I forgot where I got the term wishy washy to put with this couple, but yes this couple is very wishy washy. There were accidental kisses, and toward the end, something really serious, but by that time I was really glad it was ending. At first, I believe it was Godai’s issues, but the story has more revelations. Comparing this to Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku really seems more slice of life, so I wasn’t as necessarily as forgiving of Godai as I was for Ranma’s situation with his multiple fiancees. This type of male leads has actually became a standard for harem leads.
Maison Ikkoku, the manga had a pretty realistic and long standing relationship with a predictable ending. Before I write off this manga as being a don’t read book, which I really don’t want to, there is like 30% of me that said please consider reading this, for just respecting Takahashi’s work. There is such a large fan base for this title, and it actually reads like a typical slice of life live action drama. I have a personal bias against reading this type of book, so that colors my perceptions. Still I enjoyed other aspects of this series, regarding adaptations.
I have to say that the 1st opening of the 92 episode anime series, has been an opening I liked for a long time.
Then there were several live actions adaptations. I really enjoyed watching the 2007 live action special for Maison Ikkoku. It starred Misaki Ito who is well known for her Densha Otoko role. I believe now that the reason why I liked it so much, was how short it was, and how pretty Misaki Ito is.
Kosaku is a boxer who loves food, and has issues with weight gain, much to the frustration of his Coach Mukoda. In the first chapter, he falls in love with Sister Angela, a nun from the local convent. This is a classic four volume tale of an unlikely couple from Rumiko Takahashi. Each chapter pretty much has Kosaku facing different rounds, as well as try to express his affection to Angela.
Many readers may find this tale probably offensive on the religious aspect, but I find that as an interesting plot mechanism. As far as I am aware, Japan as a country only has a small percentage of Christians. It is primarily a country seeped with traditions in Shintoism or Buddhism. So the mention of Angela as a nun is unique and interesting, since I can think of other ways a nun can be done. In this instance though, love really has no boarders for Kosaku.
I am disappointed that this series had only four volumes. There are characters and background introduced toward the latter part of the series, that made the ending a very rushed feeling. I certainly didn’t expect the ending to end the way it did! There really is no possibility of redoing this series, but reading this series definitely made me realize the creativity of Takahashi.
For One Pound Gospel, there has been an anime OVA, and it was great in animating what I read in the manga. It runs up to the point of when Kosaku boxes Jiro Amakusa who is a character featured in the first volume. Then the ending of Cry No More by Mari Hamada as the ending theme is a great upbeat song!
There has also been a live action series that starred Kuroki Meisa, and Kazuya Kamenashi. The live action series is an adaption of the manga, with several inclusion and changes of characters. It fleshes out stories of the manga, and actually has an ending. Since this live action also has nine episodes, there were definitely parts included that were not in the manga. Still to see a perspective of One Pound Gospel, as a live action, then watching this adaption is fine.
I really would recommend One Pound Gospel as a title to consider and watch.. so you can clearly see this as a preference aspect. So this is one title contribution to MMF for this month. Check out other entries at
With news of continuing aftershocks, and a period of one month that has passed for Japan, there has been a momentum of people supporting, and encouraging support. So this is going to be a slight mix of things that I found to be of an encouraging interest on Japanese news, and not all manga related, otherwise I’ll post it to Anime Diet.
These are news tweet I picked up from @stevenagata
Just about anything can be written in a manga, and the lucky few like Hikari no Go, or Yakitate Japan that gets translated over into English always leaves a manga reader like me wondering if there is even more of something more interesting to read. I am not even getting into the anime, which is based on Japanese manga and talking about niche hobbies.
So I have gotten back into origami folding, and of course with making new friends, and acquaintances. I found an outlet to talk more about manga with. Origami folding people are pretty nice, and definitely aware of Japanese culture. Recently a friend from the group lent me this manga to look through. It has fulfilled my quota that there is an origami themed manga!
What is the background for this manga? Yama-ari Tani-ori in English is translated to Mountain Fold Valley Fold and they are paperfolding techniques, where the paper is fold on the diagonal on front side and backside. Its genre is for josei, and it is serialized in Kiss, the same magazine that serialized Nodame Cantabile, and who would happen to own Kiss? Kodansha of course, so with their setting up shop on the shores of the United States. I am at this point hoping that Kodansha would one day remember to maybe bring this over. It only ends in three volumes. The author Kusaka Naoko is an author that is definitely not known in America.
Unlikely friends
So what can I gleam from this volume? It is about a16 year old named Aida Yoshi. He is a pretty shy and quiet boy, who has a passion for folding origami. Unfortunately his school doesn’t have an origami club, so he begin the process of starting a club. Eventually his classmates, Kawashima and Miyamoto joins the club.
Kero... uhhh Ribbit!
The story details some pretty cool origami things, such as folding a gigantic frog. I have seen photos of a gigantic Elephant so folding a gigantic frog is sure to impress. In later chapters, readers would learn that Kawashima is a pretty experienced folder, while Miyamoto is a beginner. Beginners usually fold mushi-gami, so of course Miyamoto is pretty upset by it. This group of three unlikely friends, is eventually led into an origami competition.
Assortment of paper folds
The themes of this manga is youth, friendship and of course origami. Even the author Kusaka Naoko said on Amazon Japan, that origami is a Japanese tradition. When I say the them is on youth, and friendship, Japanese would definitely associate that with schoolboys, and high school. There are some fan service, in the drawing and interactions of characters, that is a cultural difference though. Looking beyond that, as a reader you can see that this is a story with the theme of origami, and for this subtle past time, having a comic would definitely inspire more people to pick this past time.
It has been while since you have left, after all this year is your 8th anniversary, since your ultimate departure from life. April 1, what a damn day of recollections. Of course this is told from a EST time, since the demise location is in Hong Kong. So I can only imagine of some moments of remembrances for you held in Hong Kong. All right time does go on, but as a fan just watching moments of your career, just has me thinking of good and bad times. Leslie Cheung (張國榮).
He’s known as as a singer and an actor, so if you pay attention to Hong Kong Cinema as I grew up with. Leslie has been a big part of my viewing pleasure as I grew up. For lots of westerner audience, they may have seen him in Farewell My Concubine or Temptress Moon, since I know them as having English releases.
There’s just so many great songs that Leslie have produced, but since I have been on a bit of a schedule.. just leave up this clip. There’s English subs for the parts when he speaks, but overall his singing is in Cantonese.This is from a 1997 concert he did, with two songs. “When the Wind Blows.” and “This Life”
Recent Comments