Comic Site Rant: よっしゃ！待ってなさい私のジャポネーズ！

Posted On October 18, 2008

Original Post

Sorry for that week’s delay. I hate doing that, this time especially because I just took a break a month or so ago. I’m getting weak. But that rest was needed, and now I feel pretty decent. Well, I was feeling good until I got home, loaded up a bunch of pages only to notice that my building’s internet had gone out yet again. I was about to commend it for being up for a whole week, too. Oh well. Fucking Verizon.

On to the comic. I was feeling pretty good about the last one, and whenever this happens I get cocky and think “well, it won’t be so hard to draw half-decently again” and once I put pencil to paper everything goes all pear-shaped. This comic didn’t turn out too bad, but it’s still pretty bad. Oh well, at least there’s more fun yandere-ish action to balance it out. I hope you enjoy. The next comic should be good, as it’ll have a special guest appearance by an old, rare and obscure PSX game that I’ve been playing lately.

I should note that when this site is silent, I do encourage people to look at the blog, since there’s always stuff going on there. Remember its old tagline? “The place to check when there’s no comic for three weeks?” That shit’s still relevant.

It is at this point that I’d talk about how I’m dabbling a bit more in this whole sordid Toe-Hoe (nee, Touhou) business by playing some Imperishable Night, and I’m almost entertaining the idea of reading these FLIPFLOPS doujins I have lying around, but that’d involve some embarrassing confession on how I can’t get past level 5 of Imperishable Night on EASY MODO. Oh, wait. Shit. But yeah, I’ve been doing that. Now I know why so many people do Touhou fanart– because it’s so easy to draw better than the “official” art! lawlz

But I suck at talking about games. Instead, let’s talk about some animez. This fall season is surprisingly good, with a large number of titles that have made really strong showings in their opening episodes. I’m sure a good number of them will die and wither eventually, but I haven’t seen a start this strong in a while. It’s like the entirety of the Japanese animation industry suddenly got good drugs, or something. One title that’s been on my mind is Michiko and Hatchin. I’ll be honest and say that the first episode was something of a disappointment, but only because it lacked what I was craving. The opener itself was fine, and sets a good stage for the stuff that I’m eagerly awaiting– that being car chases and funny little police cars crashing into each other in extravagant ways. Like in the Blues Brothers. Or Riding Bean.

One thing I like about this show is the voice acting. It’s less “anime” voice acting and more “film” acting in an anime context. This isn’t really a surprise, since apparently the two leads are voiced by live action actresses. Their work is good, though. Seems they’ve adjusted to voice acting just fine, but still kept the quality of their performance less cartoony and more down to earth. It’s good stuff.

Along with new shit, I’m watching older shit, too. I just finished five more episodes of Mushishi, and it’s finally gotten to the point where I get the show’s shtick. It took me a while to ease into it, but now I can operate on its wavelength. One thing I like about Mushishi is how it plays with and betrays expectations. There aren’t always happy endings, and things aren’t always fully resolved. Now, I understand these have become kind of cliche explanations for why things are good, but Mushishi does this stuff right. When Mushishi kills a character, it’s not for shock value, or for the show to prove how badass it is. It just happens naturally, with little fanfare. That is in fact a big part of Mushishi. Its attitude is very much a “that’s life” approach to matters. Shit happens, and you gotta deal with it and move on. That’s just how it is.

Lately it’s been playing with expectations, as I mentioned earlier. It could have been doing this from episode one, but I’ve only just started to notice it. There’s points in the show where characters sort of read the audience’s mind. Here’s an example– there’s an episode that features a wife who can’t remember things such as her favourite food and what a sneeze is. At one point she sets a place at dinner for her husband who’s said to be out on a long journey. Now, I’m thinking this to myself, “that husband better not have died and she forgot about it.” Right as I think this, Ginko turns towards the screen and thinks that exact same thing to himself. That’s good script writing, right there. I almost feel like I have to buy this show.

I’ve also been watching Gankutsuou, which is less good than Mushishi but has a good trainwreck factor going for it. My main problem with Gankutsuou is that all the characters, except for a select few, are dumb as rocks, so it’s hard to really relate with any of them. In the end I just find myself laughing at each plot twist, kind of like how I watch Code Geass. Was the original novel like this?

Alright, I guess I’ll end this rant here. I’ve gone on for longer than usual. So long, that between when I started writing this and now, my building’s internet randomly came back!

Anyways, see you goons next week.

(fuck it’s down again. what the fuck)