|
23 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
Ha Jin is one of those writers; the guy you love or hate. You’ll find his stories, all set in Communist China, to be either utterly fascinating or completely boring. I’d already read Waiting and War Trash when I started The Crazed; based on my experience, I’d have to say The Crazed is not a good Jin novel to start out with, but if you’re already familiar with his work, it’s thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking.
Jian Wan is a graduate student of classical literature at a small Chinese university in the 1980’s. His teacher/advisor, Mr. Yang, has been felled by a stroke, and the Communist party official in charge of his department has decreed that Jian is to sit with his teacher every afternoon, because there are only enough nurses at the hospital to look after Mr. Yang at night. Jian doesn’t mind, at first- Mr. Yang is not only a beloved and respected teacher, but also Jian’s future father-in-law.
But Mr. Yang’s stroke has completely changed the strict but encouraging teacher. Much of the time he is utterly loony tunes, his brain sometimes in the present but more often in the past, reliving his life: from his ravings and snatches of relived conversation, Jian learns of Mr. Yang’s life as an intellectual, a father and a husband. During the Cultural Revolution he was humiliated, beaten and eventually sent to a labor camp; since then, he’s become a respected scholar of poetry. But his ranting shows Jian that Mr. Yang is not content with his lot, with his career, with what’s become of his country. Jian learns of marital strife, illicit love affairs and all sorts of things you definitely don’t want to know about your in-laws. Mr. Yang, far from being steady and content, is brimming with rage, despair and resentment. His apparently pointless ranting is nothing less than a personal history of China in the twentieth century.
All of it starts to affect Jian. Mr. Yang’s doubts and resentment strike a chord in Jian, who begins to have second thoughts about the path he’s chosen in life. Jian’s doubts lead him to reject the constricted life of a scholar in China. He leaves the city on an assignment for the Party, and is shocked by the poverty he sees there; he returns with a heavier heart. When he does, he discovers that he’s been at the center of a complex web of political and personal maneuvering, designed to take away everything he has. In despair, he makes what appears to be a minor decision to get out of the city and get some fresh air, so to speak. But his choice destroys his future and his identity, and leads him on a path to Beijing and the most notorious event in modern Chinese history. And eventually, it also leads him to a kind of freedom.
Most of Ha Jin’s work novels are slow to develop; but in his case, that pokiness gives the reader time to really absorb what he’s saying. The Crazed is no exception. It takes a little patience; at first the reader, like Jian feels that his mentor is simply nuts, spewing all sorts of craziness to no apparent purpose. By the time Jian finally gets out of that claustrophobic hospital room, you’re panting for some air just as much as he is. But in the end you see that every little thing is meaningful; all the stories, hints, and little, apparently meaningless details weave themselves into an elaborate tapestry.
But Jin’s writing style (he writes in English) is also deceptively simple and unassuming. He utilizes the sparest of details, so when you occasionally come across an entire paragraph of description it seems decadent, or sometimes annoying (since you want him to move the story along as he has been so efficiently). Because of the bluntness of his style, the characters might seen emotionally inaccessibly, or at least distant. In most novels that would be unsettling, but with The Crazed it doesn’t feel that way, since by the time this occurs to you, you’re already aware of Jin’s real meaning.
The ending will not satisfy all readers, or even most of them; it’s an open ending, but it gives you something to think about.
The Crazed is filled with fascinating insights into life inside a totalitarian state. For readers who’ve grown up in a democracy, some of Jin’s descriptions will be all but unbelieveable.
The Verdict: You’ll probably like it if you’ve read some of Jin’s other pieces and liked them as well. If not, start with Waiting, then move on to The Crazed.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: china, ha jin, novel review, the crazed |
|
22 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
Nightmare Inspector wants to be The Twilight Zone so badly that it hurts. It also wants to be Pet Shop of Horrors. It’s a noble effort and it’s an entertaining little series, but it’s simply not as good as what it aspires to be.
The setting is the Silver Star Teahouse in pre-WWII Japan, in the 1920’s (the setting might be confusing to some, but one story mentions the Great Kanto Earthquake as happening a few years previous, so there you are). The proprietors of the teahouse are a young woman named Mizuki, and the baku (a spirit that devours dreams) named Hiruko. Baku are traditionally depicted as looking like tapirs, but this one looks like a regular guy- well, as regular as any manga character looks. After all, if he was a tapir he couldn’t be dressed in a ridiculous ensemble dripping with buckles, right? The Teahouse for some reason serves mainly coffee, but no one comes there for hot beverages anyway, so whatever. They come to see Hiruko, to ask him if he can help them get rid of their nightmares. He usually does, and the only payment he asks is to eat the nightmare afterwards, so it’s a pretty sweet deal.
Each chapter is a story revolving around a new customer, and with few exceptions the stories are only a chapter long. In volume 1, the clients include a servant who dreams of his mistress’ death, a man so obsessed with a popular actress that he can’t bear seeing her character die in her latest movie, a girl who’s sick of her daily routine, and a man who has fallen in love with a mysterious woman who calls him on the phone, and desperately wants to see her face, if only in his dream. This last story ends volume 1, and is a cliffhanger leading into the next volume. In volume 2 the new customers are a woman who wants to live in the last painting her dead lover made, and a blind girl whose keen hearing is picking up a repetitive sound that is driving her crazy.
The stories are mostly self-contained, but not entirely; there are threads that run through the manga that tie things together. Volume 2 sees the addition of Hifumi, a weird rich kid who visits to see where a baku lives, but ends up taking a room above the teahouse when he falls in love with Mizuki. Hiruko’s job also takes him pretty frequently to The Delirium, some kind of club where people’s deepest desires can be brought to life. As the series progresses you learn who/what Hiruko really is: a baku who took over the body of Mizuki’s emo brother when the brother decided he didn’t feel like living anymore.
There are some neat things about Nightmare Inspector; more than once the human clients turn out to be animals or even objects in disguise (the blind girl, for instance, is a cat). The historical details are scant but interesting, and the twists inherent in every story sometimes work and sometimes don’t, but they’re rarely predictable. After a while though things start to feel terribly repetitive; customer comes in, Hiruko sends them to sleep, solves their problem, all is well, and THEN the twist pops in.
The characters, unfortunately, are right out of the Catalog of Manga Archetypes. Mizuki is sweet and polite and secretly sad about her brother. Hiruko is reticent and rude and secretly angsting about something not mentioned in these volumes. Hifumi is annoying as hell, dopey and silly. The guy who runs The Delirium is all secretive and flirty, very reminiscent of Pet Shop of Horrors’ Count D.
The art is pretty standard; the clothes are the most interesting thing about the designs. Most everyone wears historically accurate garb, except the aforementioned Hiruko, who looks like he fell into an s&m shop and then accessorized at Claire’s. Backgrounds are decent; not crowded but not too spare either.
So how does Nightmare Inspector stack up against its influences? The Twilight Zone was an innovative series that made viewers think; many of the episodes have so permeated the culture that even people who have never seen them can recognize references. Pet Shop of Horrors was a series of striking Japanese morality tales, often haunting and compelling.
Nightmare Inspector is entertaining, but ten minutes after finishing a story, I couldn’t remember what had happened in the chapter (which makes writing a review a pain in the ass, let me tell you). Do I feel like continuing the adventures of Hiruko and crew, and ferreting out their various secrets.
The Verdict: Not really.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: japan, manga, nightmare inspector, review |
|
19 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
Forbidden Dance is a manga about a high school girl who has to work hard to achieve her dreams and get with the incredibly hot and perfect guy she loves. Because, you know, no manga has ever done that exact storyline before. Even worse, Forbidden Dance indulges in every tired cliché of the genre; the gorgeous ex-girlfriend, the mean girl(s) who pick on the heroine, the apparently arrogant and cruel dude who turns out to have a sad, sad past…it’s enough to make you gag.
Aya is a high school kid and devoted ballet student. She’s the pride of her ballet school, until she chokes up at a competition and falls off the stage. After that she can’t bring herself to dance in front of an audience, despite the encouragement of her teachers and best friend, second-rate ballerina Nachan. This makes Yoshino, her main dancing rival, very happy.
Then one day Aya is chilling in the park and a random guy gives her a free ticket to a performance by a small ballet company called COOL (he’s actually not that random, turns out he’s a classmate/fellow dancer she just noticed before). She attends the show and is blown away by the athletic performances of the dancers, especially the lead dancer, Akira, who is apparently unbelievably attractive. Aya decides that the only way on God’s green Earth that she will ever ever ever be able to dance again is if she can dance with unbelievably attractive Akira. She approaches him after the show and asks to be allowed to join COOL. Unfortunately, she was so obsessed with Akira that she somehow failed to notice that every single member of the company is male. Amused by her pathetic desperation, Akira says he’ll let her in if she can win the National Ballet Competition.
Which she does, despite her rivalry with Yoshino and the fact that Nachan secretly envies Aya’s talent and tries to sabotage her performance. Along the way Aya makes peace with everyone and impresses Akira with her drive and learns about his sad, sad past and blah blah blah.
But then she discovers that she’s kind of out of her league with COOL, and Akira has an ex-girlfriend who is a famous ballet star and who visits Japan and makes Aya jealous, and she has to save COOL’s anniversary performance and gets mixed signals from him and whatever. Honestly, I’m just too bored to write the rest of the summary. You can probably figure out what happens anyway. Luckily the manga is only four volumes long, so it didn’t waste too much of my time.
You might wonder why I am so down on this manga. Sure, it might be familiar, sure it’s packed with clichés, but it’s silly, harmless fun, right?
Wrong. Aya is every bit as bad a role model for girls as that stupid bitch in the Twilight books. Wah wah wah, she fell and lost her confidence. Oh look, she can learn to dance and follow her dreams again, but ONLY if she can dance with this douchebag who treats her like shit but eventually comes to love her because she is so incredibly clingy and pathetic. Oh look, this asshole secretly has a heart of gold or some shit, and he said I made him hit me and he’d never do it again…(OK, the only hitting in this manga is by accident, or chicks slapping each other, but you can totally see where their relationship is going).
And the art? Ick. Unbelievably attractive Akira is…not attractive. None of the characters are. Hinako Ashihara’s characters look like mutants. Their foreheads are huge domes, their eyes are large as squid’s eyes, and all their features are crammed into the bottom 1/3rd of their faces. Her sketching of dance sequences is nice, but while dancing the characters only seem to have three poses apiece.
Maybe that’s because in the (frequent, boring) mangaka’s notes, Ashihara admits she knows sod-all about ballet and doesn’t know why she chose it as a subject. Now, I also know sod-all about ballet, which is why I don’t write about it. I don’t know how accurate her information about ballet is, but with her confession of ignorance being right there in the first volume, I don’t really trust her.
Besides the author’s notes, volume three contains a very long instructional manual on working out like a ballet dancer, which I read while cramming Fig Newtons into my piehole, and a short story called “Princess Line”.
The Verdict: Please God, give me back my two hours of time. I promise I’ll never randomly pick a manga to read out of the library again.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: forbidden dance, japan, manga, review |
|
18 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
If you are reading China: Land of Dragons and Emperors by Adeline Yen Mah, you are A) a teenager who needs cool facts for a report or B) one of those people with the attention span of a goldfish.
China was written with young adults in mind, as the many, many sidebars and little boxes full of trivia and the attention to the most lurid details of Chinese history prove. Mah begins at the beginning, a very good place to start: the ancient time before recorded history. There are half a dozen little sections that lay out the basics of Chinese mythology, the history of silk production, the importance of colors in Chinese culture, and other interesting but ultimately unsatisfying little facts.
Chapter Two moves on to the First Emperor- you know, the guy from Hero- and a brief history of his (short) dynasty, inevitably including a box about the terracotta army. Next is the Han dynasty, which demands a longer chapter since it lasted 420 years (See? Facts, facts everywhere). Along with the in-fighting an betrayals, there are boxes with information on Confucius (OCD, misogynist), the major religions of China, and lots of information on how awesome the Chinese were at inventing stuff, like paper and seismographs.
Moving right along, we come to the Tang dynasty, chock-full of more betrayal, in-fighting, much murder and women being bitchy and awesome, along with the invention of printing. Next up are the Song, who had it even worse and deprive women of the freedom they’ enjoyed under the Tang. There’s also a blurb on the Chinese New Year, and the most cringe-inducing chapter title in the entire book, “No singing for the Song.” Also, there’s a significant bit on more Chinese inventions.
Then the Mongols came crashing in, and the Yuan dynasty began. There’s a quick peek at Genghis, and a longer look at his son Kublai (and his famous palace). Marco Polo gets his introduction here, as do gunpowder and the Moon Festival. Next up is the Ming dynasty, they of the incredibly expensive vases, and Mah helpfully explains what a eunuch is. This is when China was sailing around the world, when they invented porcelain, and there’s an extensive (for this book, anyway) digression on the history of the Great Wall (which can’t be seen from space, after all- disappointing).
And then, the Qing. Here Mah outlines some interesting connections between China and America’s war for independence. There’s some bits and pieces about the Chinese pictographs and dialects.
The shortest chapter in the book, oddly enough, belongs to post-Imperial China; perhaps Mah thought there had been so much written about it already that more would be overkill. She breezes through Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao himself, to Deng Xiaoping. There’s even a mention of Hu Jintao (which startled me for some reason, though the book is hardly old; it was released in 2008).
China: Land of Dragons and Emperors covers two thousand years of history in 240 pages, so if you’re looking for in-depth analysis of people and events, look elsewhere. Mah skims over centuries, bringing up only the most significant (and sometimes, gruesome or lurid) incidents. The book is obviously meant for the younger set; Mah often defines things most reasonably well-read adults would know (such as what a eunuch is, as I’ve mentioned).
There’s a pretty noticeable “We’re number one!” vibe here. Mah’s endless lists of Chinese inventions are interesting, but she also adds the (often, much later) dates when the West discovered the same things; maybe it’s just that I’m American- and thus, used to being number one- but there’s a bit of superiority in her tone.
The book is a quick read, shallow but fun, if not entirely satisfying. It was nice being able to place where the Battle of Red Cliff occurred (there’s a nice chronological chart in the back), and finally realize that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon takes place during the Qing dynasty. But the book isn’t good for much else, except filling your head with interesting facts.
The Verdict: Definitely enjoyable, and you’ll probably learn something. But don’t expect too much.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: adeline yen mah, book review, china: land of dragons and emperors |
|
15 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
Mai, the Psychic Girl is a misleading title. The titular character is not, in fact, psychic. She’s something even cooler: telekinetic, meaning she can manipulate inanimate objects with the power of her mind (though the manga calls it psychokinesis, which is also correct, ‘telkinesis’ just sounds neater).
Mai Kuju is a regular 14-year-old school girl- because all manga heroines are regular school girls…at first- who hides her powers at the request of her beloved, widowed father. She’s silly, doesn’t pay attention in school, gossips with her friends, all the things teenagers do. She’s not particularly concerned when a group of strange men tries to follow her home; after all, she can use her power to cause a traffic jam to hold them up. But then the strange men come to her house and fight her dad, who has awesome mystical martial arts skills. It seems Mai is wanted by a mysterious international organization called The Wisdom Alliance, which is trying to collect people with ESP powers so they can somehow use them to keep world peace (although, considering they are a mysterious international organization, that’s probably a big lie). And Mai is the most powerful ESPer they’ve ever seen. To this end The Wisdom Alliance has made a deal with the Kaieda Agency, some kind of underground information network run by a creepy old dude with amazing martial arts skills. He needs to get Mai for the Alliance, and he personally wants to test Mai’s dad’s kung fu against his own.
Mai and her dad flee to a shrine where he tells her that she inherited her power from her dead mother. Then the Kaieda guys close in; Mai and her dad nearly escape until Kaieda drops in their trump card: a giant demon-like guy with Saiyan hair who knocks Mai’s dad off a cliff and is promptly destroyed (maybe!) by Mai’s powers. She takes off into the woods, where she meets a college boy named Intetsu who is out hiking. He’s huge (like, Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star huge) and has some blazing martial arts skills of his own. He helps Mai get back to Tokyo and lets her stay in his dorm room, where she quickly becomes the mascot/little sister for all the guys. She even adopts a puppy that turns up, but the Kaieda and Wisdom Alliance guys are still after her. And as Mai starts to use her powers more and more, she learns that terrible things can happen unless she gets her emotions under control (like gruesomely killing a big dog that attacks her pup).
By the end of volume one, Mai and Intetsu are on the run again- with their animal sidekick, of course. Volume two gets even more frenetic, with the interesting twist that Kanieda has no intention of turning Mai over to the Alliance, and the appearance of a German girl named Turm Garten, who is the second most powerful telekinetic in the world, and who really doesn’t like being number two. A battle of the minds (literally) ensues, tearing the city apart. Meanwhile, Mai’s dad is alive after all, but he has amnesia.
Mai, The Psychic Girl was released by Viz in 1995, and it acts its age. The art belongs to that school of realism that is no longer popular (similar to Sanctuary), and everything from the outfits to the hairdos to the cultural references (Mickey Mouse and Garfield show up in almost unaltered form)are early 1990’s to the max. Size is relative in this world; Intetsu towers over most of the other characters, while elderly characters are tiny and wizened. There’s a lot of detail, which is nice- you’re always noticing little things-, but it can make the action scenes seem crowded and confusing.
The characters are not terribly interesting. Mai is a typical teenage good kid (in the classic manga mold), so all her reactions to events and revelations are predictable. Her dad has some secrets, as does creepy old Kaieda. Intetsu and his college pals are amusingly stereotypical, Turm Garten is nothing but pure malice without personality. Possibly the most interesting character in the manga is the giant demon-creature-person Kaieda keeps in a cage. What the hell is this guy, after all?
The story is layered enough to keep a reader’s interest, but the whole secret-organization-that-runs-the-world-thing is overdone. The whole telekinesis thing is cool enough to make up for it, though. It’s a nice change that there are lots of people willing to help Mai, instead of everyone being against her like you’d usually see in a story like this. It adds a nice element to the story; how the people who have become concerned will lose or gain by their involvement.
It’s not a series for the kiddies, by any means. There’s a lot of gruesome violence, and a couple bathtub scenes whose only apparent purpose is to show off Mai’s naked, sleek, barely-pubescent figure.
The Verdict: Mai is definitely not the kind of manga that would be popular today, but if you have a craving for something old-school, check it out.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: japan, mai the psychic girl, manga, review |
|
11 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
In a crowded Seoul subway station, a rural visitor boards a train. But his wife of fifty years becomes lost in the crowd; the train pulls away without her. He turns around at the next station, but by the time he returns to where he last saw her, she’s gone.
This disappearance is the driving force behind Kyung-sook Shin’s novel Please Look After Mom, a wrenching look into the complex web of family dynamics, the things that bring them together, and the things that tear them apart.
Mom’s vanishing devastates her five grown children and her husband. As the days turn into months and even the police give up searching for her, they find themselves fraught with guilt, consumed by memories of the woman they loved, yet mostly took for granted. These memories are woven together to create, in rich detail, the portrait of a life that may or not be over.
The story is told from four points of view: Chi-hon, the second eldest child and oldest daughter, Hyung-chol, the eldest son, Father, and Mom herself. We start with Chi-hon, a successful novelist. She recalls a hardworking woman, a country wife and mother who was never educated, who often embarrassed and infuriated Chi-hon with her ignorance and superstition. Hyung-chol suffers wracking guilt; as the adored oldest child, Mom both worshipped and pressured him. His dream of becoming the lawyer she wanted him to be, as well as his dream of raising her above her situation and giving her a comfortable life, were lost somewhere along the path his life has taken. Father finds himself lost, unable even to do the simple household tasks his wife always took care of. He too has plenty to berate himself for: selfishness, resentment, adultery, abandonment. As they all wonder how a grown women could have become so thoroughly lost, their recent memories bring up a common theme that points to their mother having severe health and mental problems that none of them wanted to see.
When Mom’s turn comes, we are given the answer to at least one question, though her children may never learn it. She confesses her worry for her younger daughter, a mother with three small children and the closest to Mom in her situation. She recalls her youth, her arranged marriage, all the terror and wonder of motherhood, and she reveals one or two secrets her family will likely never know.
The final chapter returns the story to Chi-hon, who finds herself facing a strange new world: a place where her mother doesn’t exist. There is no resolution to this story, as such. The characters simply fumble ahead, perhaps never knowing what happened to their wife and mother, and only now appreciating what she meant to all of them.
Please Look After Mom is a gut-wrenching novel that will haunt readers long after they finish it. While anyone with a mother can relate, it will resonate most strongly with people my age (31, if you really want to know) and older- people who are now realizing that their parents are aging, that they may have to serve as their caretakers someday, that their parents will eventually be gone and they will be alone. Readers who also have children will appreciate both points of view: the adult children suddenly unmoored, and the parents watching their kids grow up and away from them.
The writing style of Please Look After Mom is clear and graceful; it’s a relatively quick read, and for once the translation has no awkward moments. Shin uses every point of view available: Hyung-chol is written in third person, Mom is first person, Father and Chi-hon are in second person. Second person is annoying; it has the effect of distancing a reader from the character, probably the opposite of what the author intended. But the sheer intimacy of the novel luckily saves it from being too gimmicky of an approach.
I have one other admittedly minor complaint about Please Look After Mom. Three of the kids are explored in intimate detail: their actions, feelings, memories. But there are five children altogether. What about the second-oldest son or the youngest son? They receive passing mentions, but you can’t help but wonder how they are handling their mother’s disappearance. They have the feel of missing puzzle pieces. Adding them into the story would likely have doubled the length of the book, so you can understand why Shin left them out. Yet you can’t help but feel a bit bereft.
Please Look After Mom paints a vivid picture of modern South Korea. It’s rural and urban, modern and archaic, old and young. But despite the between the lives of the American readers and the Korean characters, we can feel connected to them: families, no matter where they live, are in many ways the same.
Please Look After Mom will be released in the United States in April 2011.
The Verdict: Definitely worth your time. This book will make you call your mom, just to hear her voice and make sure she’s still there.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: family, Novel, please look after mom, review, south korea |
|
10 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
If Tsutomu Nihei is a prophet, the future is going to suck ass, but at least it’s going to look awesome.
In Blame! and its companion manga, Noise, people are repressed by bizarre cyborgs and have to live in an endlessly-ascending cyber-dungeon. In Biomega, they get to go outside, but there are zombies everywhere. And in Biomega, the last hope of saving humanity isn’t…even…human.
It’s 3005 A.D. Mankind completes its first manned mission to Mars in seven centuries. The astronauts find that the formerly populated Martian outpost is wrecked…except for one forlorn, mysterious human- or a forlorn, mysterious human-shaped creature.
Jump forward six months. Mankind has been devastated by the NS5 virus, which the astronauts brought back with them. Instead of killing those who contract it, NS5 just turns them into mindless ‘drones’; zombies, basically, although they can mutate into gross monsters and attck when threatened. As the story opens, Zoichi Kanoe, a ‘synthetic human’ arrives in a city on his badass motorcycle. He’s been sent by his employers, Toa Heavy Industries (a company of the same name was mentioned in Blame!, but the two series don’t seem to be connected, as least so far), to ‘purify’ the city by ridding t of drones.
But as soon as he enters the city he accidentally runs down a teenage girl. Her dismembered leg sticks itself right back on, to Zoichi’s surprise. He’s even more surprised when a bipedal, gun-toting grizzly bear bounds out to protect the girl and usher her back into the city.
The girl, it turns out, is seventeen-year-old Eon Green. She’s an Accommodator- someone who contracts the virus but doesn’t zombify; instead, ZS5 gives them incredible healing powers, and maybe other powers as well.
Toa Heavy Industries wants Accommodators for their own purposes. But other people want Accommodators too, including a mysterious organization called the Public Health Service- which doesn’t seem to be that focused on public health, considering they have something called ‘compulsory execution units’…
Biomega is like Blame! in many ways, but the little annoyances that plagued it (a complete lack of explanation for anything, almost no dialogue, and confusing action scenes) are remedied in Biomega. There’s still not much dialogue, but there’s enough to keep the reader in the loop, so to speak. In this first volume, there are tantalizing hints about the various organizations wanting the Accommodators, and why; about Eon Green herself, about the bear- intriguingly named Kozlov L. Grebnev- and the drones. Since it’s only the first volume, not much is explained, but it looks as if we’re in for some full-on government-military conspiracy shit.
Nihei’s action scene have improved immensely. They’re drawn out over several panels; so while the story is fast-paced, we can still see what’s going on. He also takes advantage of these multiple panels to show us the extent of Zoichi’s powers- in one scene he shoots some murderous drones, then holsters his gun before they even hit the ground.
The main attraction of anything by Tsutomu Nihei is his unique, distinctive art style. Biomega is fascinating to look at. The angular, fish-eyed characters, the intricate weaponry and vehicles, and his backgrounds…his backgrounds are what Heaven looks like, if God is a cyberpunk fan with an affinity for vast spaces, narrow bridges, Gothic architecture and balconies. The designs are simply awesome, and you’ll find yourself going back just to look at them again (and noticing new details every time).
It’s hard to tell how a manga will go from just the first volume, but thus far Biomega shows the potential to be seriously amazing. I just hope Nihei can carry it through.
The Verdict: Pretty damn cool. I just hope it stays that way.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: biomega, japan, manga, review, tsutomu nihei |
|
4 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
So Gohan loves this t.v. show called Super Why. It’s about these kids who solve problems by finding the solutions in books. Which is great, unless the people in the book have way more problems than you.
There are a couple kinds of books I usually avoid like the plague: any kind of ‘coming-of-age’ story, and stories about women finding their places in the world. They kind of make me want to gag. Usually they don’t have any murders or dragons, either.
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xioalu Guo is one of those about a woman finding her place in the world, more or less. I picked it up because it looked like a quick read, and it promised a fascinating look into modern Chinese society. I was right about the quick read, and the blurb was right about being a peek into the Beijing of today. Unfortunately, that’s about all the book has to recommend it.
Fenfang Wang leaves her rural home at the age of seventeen, sick of the endless fields of sweet potatoes and the eternal silence between her parents. She makes her way to Beijing with no idea of what to do next. Luckily for her, on her first night there she witnesses an arguing mother and her teenage daughter running out of an apartment and being run down by a van in the street. She promptly takes up residence in their empty apartment, and no one seems to care.
She goes through a series of odd jobs: hotel maid, factory girl, theater usherette. This last job inspires in Fenfang a love of movies, especially Western cinema. She signs up to be an extra at a film studio, and manages to eke out a meager living playing roles like ‘woman-on-a-bridge’ or ‘waitress-wiping-a-table’. Along the way she takes up with Xiaolin, a production assistant who is stuck in a rut and who becomes one of those creepy stalker-ish ex-boyfriends after Fenfang breaks up with him. She also meets Ben, and American screenwriter who’s slumming it in Beijing, but who eventually goes back to school in the States. She maintains a friendship with Huizi, a philosophical screenwriter who ends up being in love with her. After a while Fenfang takes up scriptwriting herself, and this new creative outlet leads to Fenfang’s eventual escape from the rat race and from Beijing.
Twenty Fragments is written as a series of twenty vignettes, scenes from Fenfang’s life that occur weeks or months apart. They’re short and sharp, but there’s no real confusion about what happens when or what’s going on; Fenfang makes it clear that nothing much is going on in her life between these scenes. It’s a modern story for modern readers, those with the attention span of gnats.
The problem with this novel is the characters; Fenfang has a voice, but she’s not a very interesting person; between lying around being depressed and drifting through Beijing with no apparent purpose, there’s little time for actually developing a personality. Even when she returns home for a visit, there’s no sense of connection with her past; since she lacks any connection with her present, it’s just boring. The men in her life- and they’re all men, no girlfriends to be found- aren’t much better: Xiaolin has no real motivation, Ben is lifeless (we don’t even know why they continue to call each other after he goes to America; neither ever says much of anything), and Huizi quotes poetry instead of having his own ideas; the scene at the end in which he confesses his love for Fenfang rings completely false, as he hasn’t had much page time before then, and Guo has given us no indication of his feelings before this.
The most developed character in this novel is Beijing. Guo uses a few strokes to paint a picture of a city rushing to modernize while still constrained by its Communist government. Fenfang’s generation totes laptops and watches pirated DVDs; her elderly neighbors reminisce on street corners and look askance at an unmarried young woman living alone. She lives in a series of Mao-era cement block apartment buildings, but has friends from America. Around her, the city tears down its old buildings and raises new, often substandard ones in their place. This China is confused, longing to be a modern country but aghast when its Communist morals are thrown aside.
The Verdict: If you’re interested in visiting China, this novel may give you an idea of what to expect. But don’t read it for the characters.
| Category: Print Reviews, Reviews | Tag: china, Novel, review, twenty fragments of a ravenous youth |
|
2 Feb
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
It’s Manga Wednesday!
I have a love-hate relationship with CLAMP. By that, I mean they’ve produced two series I love, and a bunch more that I hate (or, more usually, that I’m indifferent to). RG Veda is one of the bunch to which I am indifferent. I don’t hate it, I certainly don’t love it, and I’m not particularly sorry Tokyopop dropped it after only five volumes (originally there were ten).
I admit, I have zero knowledge of the original Rigveda, one of Hinduism’s four sacred texts. But I’m guessing that all it has in common with CLAMP’s version is the title, especially considering that the original is described as a series of hymns, and also considering that the manga is packed with a few of CLAMP’s favorite things- shounen ai leanings that are never fulfilled, people vowing to become stronger to protect their loved ones, and women committing honorable suicide for love.
The story opens post-war: the king of the gods, Tentei, has been dumb enough to get himself beheaded by a rebel god, Taishakuten. Taishakuten of course is the villain in this tale, and he destroys anyone who defied him. This means that many of the guardian tribes (which kept peace in the kingdom as well as defended it from giant monsters and demons) have been decimated, so not only is the place being terrorized by monsters, it’s also being terrorized by its ruler.
Lord Yasha, king of the creatively-named Yasha guardian tribe, comes across an exiled fortune-teller, who tells him where to find the sole survivor of the most powerful guardian tribe (destroyed by Tasiahkuten during the war), the infant heir of Lord Ashura, who is still a baby despite 300 years having passed since the takeover. It seems that six stars- six dispossessed guardians- are just waiting to be found so they can pool their powers and take down Taishakuten. But Taishakuten’s heard the same prophecy, and he’ll do anything to get rid of the Ashura kid, sending entire armies to waste him and Yasha. As a result, Lord Yasha’s tribe is wiped out except for him.
Lord Yasha and the quickly-growing Ashura go on the lam, dodging various pursuers while searching for the other four stars. They take shelter with a troupe of dancers, pick up a companion (the personality-free Souma) and throw in their lot with the brash young king of the Dragon tribe. Along the way a divine spirit/demon/whatever, in the form of a hot dude, drops in to give them tips, like they have to go to an underground city to retrieve the legendary Shura sword so Ashura can do whatever it is he’s going to do to bring down Taishakuten. In the meantime, Taishakuten’s doing everything he can to make as many enemies as possible, ensuring that his eventual downfall will be a piece of cake. Unfortunately (?), American readers will never know, since Tokyopop stopped releasing it at volume five. And I didn’t even read that far.
RG Veda has an entertaining concept, but it gets bogged down in loads of cliché and colorless characters. Lord Yasha’s purely a bore, devoted to saving the kingdom and predictably playing daddy to Ashura. He might be noble, but he’s not very interesting. Ashura is one of those earnest kids CLAMP so loves, vowing on what seems like every other page to grow stronger so no one else has to die because of him (and yet…people keep dying because of him). Every woman in the manga is ready to die for love- except for Taishakuten’s bitch wife, who also happens to be Ashura’s mother and the most interesting character in the manga.
While RG Veda is one of CLAMP’s very early works, their signature style is already on full display. Men are either super-feminine or built like mutated linebackers, everyone has hair that drags the floor (save for one of Taishakuten’s generals who, amusingly, seems to have gone to Lionel from Thundercats for styling advice), and al children have eyes the size of dinner plates. At least here you don’t see the massive amounts of wasted space that dominate X/1999 or Clover, and there are no endless pages of floating feathers or turning gears or dandelion fluff or any of that crap. Their action scenes suck; it’s usually impossible to follow what’s going on between the clouds of dust/magic fairy powder/columns of flame, so I just skipped to the last panel to find out who won. The costumes and backgrounds are the pretty cool: lots of draped fabric and huge shoulder pads, but some scenes are just overcrowded with too many people wearing too many clothes.
The first couple of volumes have a bonus feature introducing CLAMP’s four members and explaining what each does in the manga-creation process (according to the feature, as of 1989- the year of RG Veda’s release- they all lived together. In college I shared an apartment with two other chicks; if a fourth woman had been thrown in there, I would have lost my freaking mind). Each volume also has a cutesy bonus comic that casts the RG Veda characters as modern-day detective, solving what have to be the most inane crimes ever.
The Verdict: If you’re a CLAMP fan, you might want to check it out, if only to chart their development. If you’re a cosplayer, you may want to get ideas for costumes to show off your manly chest or shapely legs…all others, don’t bother.
|
5 Jul
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
One sunny day, a cat and her brood of kittens go for a walk in the city. One little kitten, a gray tabby. Meanders off and becomes separated from her family. After dodging giant dogs and rushing cars, she collapses in a park, where a mother and her toddler son pick her up and take her home.
They can’t keep her, however; their landlord doesn’t allow pets. But it’s hard to find anyone willing to take in a stray, even in cat-crazy Japan, and the family is growing more attached to her by the minute. Chi, as they come to call her, is at first hellbent on escaping and finding her cat family. But she gradually begins to forget her mother and siblings as she grows used to her human, the Yamadas.
Chi’s Sweet Home is a collection of short stories about the adventures of Chi and the Yamadas. From finding the right cat food to keeping Chi from shredding the furniture to some arduous litter box training, the Yamadas have their hands full. And they have to make sure she’s kept hidden from the landlord and the nosy neighbors; they even sneak her out to the vet in a picnic basket and find an ingenious way to keep her from sitting, fully visible, in the window.
The manga is nothing more or less than a chronicle of all the triumphs and tribulations of pet ownership. Any cat owner will chuckle and nod with understanding when Chi rejects a pile of fancy cat toys in favor of a plastic bag, or when the Yamadas try to give her a bath. But the mangaka, Konami Kabata, tries to see things from Chi’s point of view as well. Things drawn from Chi’s perspective are dauntingly huge, and distractions like dripping taps or shoelaces are prominent in her eyes. The manga has no solid plot, but every vignette adds a little more to the ongoing saga of Chi and the Yamadas. Most of it is cute and funny, but there are moments when the threat of Chi being discovered- and the Yamadas forced to give her away or evicted- become very real. This may be explored further in future volumes, but in the first volume these moments don’t do much to detract from the sweet fluffiness of the stories.
Chi looks more like a slightly bizarre stuffed animal than a cat. She has enormous saucer eyes and a physique that suggests bonelessness rather than grace. The Yamadas are fairly nondescript, though the husband/dad resembles a hipster with shaggy hair and stylish glasses. The entire manga is in color, which is okay; but because of this the art lacks the shading and thus the depth of black and white artwork (and kicks up the price a bit too- volume 1 from Vertical is $13.95).
Vertical has done a nice job with this release, as they almost always do. It’s a quality paperback, one that even my son couldn’t immediately tear the cover off of. But they’ve chosen to do a couple things that, while not deal breakers, seriously hampered my enjoyment of the manga. One is pretty minor: the blurb on the back of the book is written from the point of view of one of the Yamada adults (it’s unclear which one). This is obviously meant to feel cozy, but I just found it condescending and annoying.
The second, more intense peeve I have with the manga is also meant to be cozy and cute. In an effort to make Chi sound like a little kid (and thus make her even more adorable), the translator has given her a speech impediment, or perhaps just a weird accent. For example, when she encounters a dog, she thinks, “Scawey!” (rather than “Scary!”), and when she encounters the plastic bag she thinks, “It’s cawling me!”. While I understand the reasoning behind this, it still irritates me. If cats think in words, surely they use the King’s English with proper pronunciation (and possibly they even use ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and call humans ‘the servants’.).
Chi’s Sweet Home is another excellent effort from Vertical. It will really only appeal to little girls, cat lovers and cat owners, but since there seem to be plenty of those in the world, I think it will do very well.
| Category: Print Reviews | Tag: cats, chi's sweet home, japan, manga, Vertical |
|
5 Mar
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
We’re readers. When we moved a couple years ago Shapiro Keats did a quick count of our books; it was something like 1,700 and since then we’ve bought more. Gohan is quickly amassing collection to rival ours, though. At least they don’t take up as much space because they tend to be very short.
Here are the Asian-themed picture books he has:
 |
This little kid goes with his grandpa to a library in the middle of the woods. He takes along his red fish in a bowl (no small feat considering they are riding a bicycle). The fish hops out of its bowl and into a book. A trippy sequence ensues as the kid chases his fish through the book. It’s all very surreal. This book is gorgeous. Best of all, I got it for free from my friend who picked it up at a librarians’ conference. |
 |
Yoko is an anthropomorphic cat who likes to chill with her grandparents in their ultra-traditional Japanese garden. But when Yoko’s family moves to America, can she keep in touch with her roots? Of course she can, it’s a kids’ book. The cool thing about this book is that the drawings of Japan reselmble Hiroshige paintings, and a lot of the clothes and stuff are made with cutouts of patterned origami paper. |
 |
This is pretty much “Beauty and the Beast” but in China and with a dragon. The heroine is so virtuous you kind of want to puke, but I guess it’s good for kids to emulate good people. There’s a lot of text so wiggly older kids probably won’t sit still for it all, but Gohan is still immobile so he’s hostage to my whims. The illustrations are really vivid and realistic (except for, you know, the dragon and the people flying on clouds and all). |
 |
Nara is a famous artist known for his sullen-looking, creepy-ass little girl drawings. So it’s no surprise there is a sullen-looking, creepy-ass little gitl in this book. Poor puppy. No one ever notices him. Not because he is tiny, but because he’s huge- like, front paws in New York, hind paws in Russian huge. Then the little girl sees him and climbs up his leg and they play and go flying in space and shit. What I want to know is, if that thing is a puppy, how big will he be when he grows up? |
 |
This is pretty much the saddest story ever, packaged with elegant illustrations. In this version, the husband is kind of an ass. The Decembrists did a good album based on this story. Again, there’s a lot of text and the pictures aren’t quite primary-colored enough to keep Gohan’s attention right now, but maybe someday if I think he’s too happy I will read this to him. |
 |
Like “The Crane Wife” isn’t depressing enough. Here is the story of a dog who waits in a train station for his dead master for ten years because he doesn’t realize his master is dead. When we went to Japan I made Shapiro Keats go to Shibuya Station with me just to get a picture of the Hachiko statue there. I can’t read this to Gohan without crying. So Shapiro Keats will have to read it to him. Same thing with “The Mightiest Heart”, “Black Beauty” and the chapter where the White Witch kills Aslan. |
 |
I have no idea why I bought this. Wait, yes I do. It was on remainder and I had some idea about not shielding kids from difficult subjects because they are smrter and tougher than adults think. I still have that idea but even I find this book disturbing. It’s about a little girl and her parents who manage to flee Hiroshima with radioactive fire on their heels and the horrible things they see on their way out of town. And escaping doesn’t even save them because they all get radiation poisoning. It’s going to be a long time before Gohan gets to look at this one. |
 |
Again, lots of text but nice illustrations. I think Gohan needs to learn that girls kick ass as soon as possible. Because I heard cootie immunizations cause autism and I don’t want him to do that.
** I don’t believe vaccinations cause autism and I think Jenny Mccarthy is talking out her ass. The only study that ever showed a link was recently discredited. Gohan has gotten his shots and will continue to get them. ** |
 |
This book is awesome. An old lady obsessed wtih cooking rice balls falls down a crack into the underground world of the oni, who make her cook rice balls for them until she launches a daring esscape. This book rocks because when you read it you can give the old woman a really high voice and make all the oni have weird accents. Also the oni kind of look like this really evil math teacher I had in high school. Mr. R, if you’re reading this, you can suck it. I have never had to use algebra in my adult life so there.
|
I feel like I should have one more to make a round number but we only have nine. I’ll get on finding that tenth Asian-themed book right away.
| Category: Print Reviews | Tag: asian, children's books, picture books |
|
23 Jul
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
Mariko Koike’s The Cat in the Coffin (Vertical Press, June 2009) opens with the young housekeeper of an admired, elderly artist bringing a stray cat to her employer’s home. She expects Masayo, the artist, to perhaps feed the cat and then put it back out. But to her surprise the sight of the animal brings to the surface long-buried memories of Masayo’s youth. The Cat in the Coffin is Masayo’s recollection to her housekeeper; or, more accurately, her confession.
It is the 1950’s, during the American occupation of Japan. Twenty-year-old Masayo travels from her rural home to Tokyo, to take a job tutoring the eight-year-old daughter of a famous widowed artist. Goro Kawakubo is an international success, and lives the life of a playboy, throwing lavish parties and aping the Western style of the occupiers. But he’s also fiercely devoted to his daughter Momoko, and kindly encourages Masayo in her own attempts at painting. Masayo convinces herself that his slick exterior hides a deep and abiding grief for his late wife, and, like any romantic young woman, falls in love with him.
She finds Momoko as fascinating as Goro. The little girl is well-behaved, smart, almost eerily adult in her mannerisms, and completely and utterly friendless except for her fluffy white cat, Lala. At first the devotion between girl and pet seems impossible to penetrate, but gradually Momoko begins to let Masayo in, with Lala’s approval, and Masayo’s affection for her turns to love.
But their cozy household is shattered by the arrival of Chinatsu, an old friend of Goro’s who has obviously become something more. Chinatsu is glamorous and vivacious and, most importantly, she hates and fears cats. Her attempts to befriend Momoko and Lala fall flat, and Masayo’s hatred of her is second only to Momoko’s.
Things come to a head when Goro announces his intentions to marry Chinatsu. Chinatsu is so desperate to win Momoko’s affection that she commits a horrific crime, one that drives the girl further away than ever. And Masayo, for love of Momoko and jealousy of Chinatsu, bears witness to an even worse crime, one that will haunt her for the rest of her life.
The Cat in the Coffin is a short, spare novel; Koike doesn’t wallow in excessive description. She relates events in Masayo’s voice, just as if the artist were telling the painful story to the reader. The characters are quickly sketched from Masayo’s memories, and at first they seem skeletal, but as events unfold Koike fleshes them out considerably: Momoko goes from creepy kid to deeply disturbed child; Chinatsu starts out as a shallow Barbie doll but gradually wins sympathy, especially after the revelation of a secret from her shared past with Goro.
Masayo herself seems to have a little too much insight into her own flaws and weaknesses, but then, she’s had almost forty years to reflect on the events of that time. Koike doesn’t pass judgment on her characters’ actions. She tells the story as fact and lets the reader decide.
The translation by Deborah Boliver Boehm is a swift, easy read in keeping with the story’s Spartan style. Vertical’s done a nice job with the presentation, though the cat on the cover is orange and white, while Lala is clearly described as being completely white. The price will probably put off some prospective readers: $14.95 is a lot to ask for such a slender trade paperback, even one of this quality.
I’d recommend The Cat in the Coffin to anyone with an interest in Japanese pop literature. In Japan, Koike is well-known as a suspense and romance author, though this is her first title to be translated into English in the U.S. It’s a disturbingly quiet little tale of psychological suspense that will leave you feeling drained.
| Category: Print Reviews | Tag: fiction, japan, mariko koike, suspense novel, the cat in the coffin, Vertical |
|
12 Jul
|
Posted by AnaKhouri
|
This is Part Four of my ongoing quest to review manga that I would normally never, ever bother reading. This session’s genre: the sports manga.
I’m not a sports person, really. I enjoy the occasional sumo match or baseball game (and, head hung with shame, I admit to enjoying Princess Nine). So sports manga rarely even register on my radar.
The series I chose to tackle was Takehiko Inoue’s Real.
Nomiya is the bad high school kid, the bully, the perpetual troublemaker. The only thing keeping him from being a full-on criminal is being on the school’s basketball team. But after a motorcycle accident in which a girl is rendered paraplegic, he quits the team. Shortly afterward he drops out of school altogether (leaving his relieved classmates a farewell, er…’present’ on the front steps).
While visiting Natsumi- a girl he barely knows, who just happened to accept his offer of a ride that fateful night- Nomiya sees a guy in the hospital gym, practicing basketball despite the fact that he is in a wheelchair. Overcome with desire to play again, he borrows Natsumi’s chair and challenges the guy to some one-on-one…and is amazed when he’s beaten. But that skirmish reawakens Nomiya’s passion for the game.
In driving school, Nomiya meets Azumi, a girl who manages a wheelchair basketball team. Her brother Togawa, who lost a leg to bone cancer, quit the team in disgust over his teammates’ lack of competitiveness and their, “We’re disabled, what do you expect?” attitude. Unsurprisingly, Togawa turns out to be the same guy who beat Nomiya in the hospital gym.
A chance encounter gives Nomiya a bright idea: he and Togawa start challenging random players to two-on-two pickup games, betting large amounts of money. The marks invariable try to go easy on Togawa, and end up poorer for it. Meanwhile, Nomiya’s enemy from his high school basketball team, Takahashi, steals a bike and is promptly run down by a truck. The accident irreparably damages his spinal cord (and we can all predict what happens next…). As Togawa contemplates rejoining his old wheelchair team and turning them into real competitors, Takahashi tries to deal with his new life.
Real is a sports manga that isn’t all about the sport. Well, okay, actually it’s mostly about the sport. Takehiko Inoue’s (also the creator of the more popular Slam Dunk) intense love of basketball is evident in every lovingly rendered panel set during a game, and every detailed conversation about game strategies. A couple characters even wear hairstyles dedicated to their favorite players; Nomiya’s modest afro is “The Kobe Bryant Look”. You see, too, Inoue’s own dissatisfaction with basketball’s status in Japan; the boys have a great deal of trouble finding places to practice, as almost all courts belong to high schools or private sports clubs. It appears that, despite everything, basketball fans in Japan are still a minority, and it’s definitely not accessible to everyone.
Real has the added element of wheelchairs, of course, and it doesn’t feel as if the addition is just a novelty; you get the feeling that this version of basketball is something that really interests Inoue. The true story of course is about these young men using their passion for basketball to overcome their disabilities, which could easily become patronizing and predictable. But it’s not, mostly thanks to the characterizations. These guys are not wide-eyed Pollyannas determined to show the world they can be just like everyone else. They’re angry, and rightly so, at the hand fate has dealt them. They’re not cheerful and optimistic and full of hope. They can be jerks, and their psychological problems can’t all be solved, even by basketball. Basketball is a way for them to escape their unhappy situations. If the world notices that they are like everyone else, that wasn’t their intention; they play basketball purely for selfish reasons. Nomiya isn’t even a particularly lovable punk with a heart of gold, which you’d expect from a character with his setup; he’s just trying to assuage his guilt about Natsumi. Story-wise and character-wise, Real is miles above Inoue’s earlier work Slam Dunk. It’s meant for more mature audience, and it delivers admirably.
The art style is also changed (dare I say improved?), resembling Inoue’s Vagabond much more than Slam Dunk. The characters in Real look like more-or-less actual people. There’s no cookie-cutter pretty boys or shoujo beauties. The characters aren’t even particularly attractive, which, if you look around, is pretty much how most people are.
Real is released by Viz Signature, which puts out mature series in a format that is much more attractive and high-quality than their general releases. It’s an attractive package, in a slightly larger format than is normal for American-released manga.
I was surprised by the heart and the complexity of Real. If you’re going to read a sports manga, this is definitely one to try.
| Category: Print Reviews | Tag: basketball, japan, manga, real, takehiko Inoue, viz |
|
17 Jun
|
Posted by Mazinga
|
Summer’s here, and the time is right for grabbing your 20-sided die and indulging in a weekend of frenzied gaming action at GenCon. The massive gaming convention returns to Indianapolis in August. Musashi and I plan to attend and enjoy the con’s many gaming- and anime-related attractions. Here’s a press release giving a preview of all the action.
Gamers Prepare for Gen Con Indy
Highlights of upcoming show revealed
INDIANAPOLIS – (June 2009) When it comes to all things gaming, nothing compares to the gamers paradise that occurs every August at Gen Con Indy , the nation’s largest annual consumer fantasy, electronic, sci-fi and adventure game convention. With Co-Sponsors like Upper Deck Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast and hundreds of other exhibitors, 6,000+ gaming events, anime and more, there is much to look forward to at Gen Con. For the seventh year in a row, the event will be held at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis from August 13-16.
| Category: Print Reviews, Uncategorized | Tag: gaming |
|
2 Jun
|
Posted by Mazinga
|
One of the unique creations of Hong Kong action cinema is the Chinese vampire flick. Beginning in 1985 with the wonderful Mr. Vampire, Hong Kong cinema enjoyed several years of cranking out genre horror-comedies featuring those dreaded manifestations of restless spirits, hopping corpses and walking vampires (with maybe the seductive female ghost thrown in for good measure).
Although this trend petered out some years ago under the burden of countless identical copycats – not to mention the death of stalwart actor Lam Ching Ying, who so often embodied the role of the One-Eyebrow Sifu – noted director/producer Tsui Hark (Zu Warriors, Once Upon a Time in China) returned to the well one more time with 2002’s The Era of Vampires, released on DVD in the United States as Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters. Although Tsui Hark wrote the screenplay and produced, director Wellson Chin (The Inspector Wears Skirts I-IV, Ghostly Vixen) helmed the picture. And just as the film’s title is a bit misleading, so is its billing: Though slated as a horror / comedy, it isn’t very funny, though it satisfies on the action front.
| Category: Print Reviews, Uncategorized | Tag: film, Hong Kong, horror, martial arts, vampire |
