Category: Recommendations

Recommendation: Zashiki Onna

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I just got started on the pencils for chapters 3-4 of Small Shen, and this will probably take up a large chunk of my time for the next month or so. I also made some headway on my story for the Peter Pan anthology that the Bento creators are putting together – I wrote the whole story, which is 10 pages in total (including title page), and called We are the Pickwicks. You’ll get to read the story eventually, so I’ll keep mum on what it’s about.

The other piece of news is… I finally got the Store section up! It’s an Amazon Store at the moment, mostly for American/Canadian buyers; but for the International people, I’m also setting up a Book Depository Store, since that online store has Free International Shipping! The setup process is more complex than Amazon’s, so hopefully I’ll get that store up in the next few weeks.

 
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Zashiki Onna (manga)
(1993, Mochizuki Minetaro)

This week I’m recommending a one-shot manga called Zashiki Onna, which is a horror manga that is light on gore but heavy on the creepiness. Against all that is holy, I am linking to a pirated manga site, because sadly it’s the only way to read this manga in english (for now anyway).

This short, 1-volume horror manga is created by Mochizuki Minetaro, the same guy who created Dragon Head. Those reading manga in the early days of TOKYOPOP may remember this dark story about people trapped in a long dark tunnel, victims of what appears to have been an earthquake. This is an earlier work from him, written in a time where hardly anyone has heard of “stalking”. Perhaps that’s why it’s rather obscure – apart from the short length, it’s also a fairly old manga. But it’s a good one.

 

Plot
Hiroshi Mori is a typical young man in college – living in a cheap rental apartment and fantasising about a girl he likes. All was fine, until one night when he hears a persistent banging on his neighbour’s door. He pokes his head outside to see what’s going on, which was a very bad move – it was a tall, creepy woman with long black hair, wearing a trenchcoat and carrying old shopping bags. She insists that she was looking for his neighbour, but he claims to know nothing and leaves. The next night she is back again, and it slowly becomes clear that she has shifted her attention from his neighbour… to him.

 

Why I Recommend this Manga
It’s short, and it’s creepy. If you like your horror weird and spooky, as opposed to gross and gore-splattered, this is the manga for you. It depends on what you find creepy, and in my case, gore doesn’t scare me at all – and sadly (for me), gore is the more common approach to horror in Japanese manga. Just look at my attitude to typical (and prolific) Japanese horror masters: Junji Ito of Uzumaki fame, and Kazuo Umezu of Drifting Classroom. These two manga artists are horror staples who have been around for decades, but their style largely relies on spilling blood, and distorted people doing black-shadows-on-typical-“horror”-face, something I can’t stand. Modern horror stories tend to use a cutesy artstyle, which doesn’t sit well with me either. Which is why Zashiki Onna is such a “pleasant” surprise – it’s style is ugly-realistic, but with dramatic lighting that’s entirely suited to the storyline. I feel safe recommending this to any kind of horror fan, as opposed to just manga-reading horror fans. That says a LOT about this story.

 
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Okay, stalking stories have been around for yoinks, but because of the art style and the straight-forward story-teling, this manga retains a lot of its power. Not that readers understood that this was a “stalker” story when this story first came out. Most readers back in 1993 probably knew nothing about stalkers, and so were probably quite freaked out by what they might have originally thought was just some over-zealous admirer. Even the title, Zashiki Onna, reflects what the true form of the female stalker might have been. You see, this manga marries two of the most enduring horror-supernatural tropes of Japanese culture – a creature called the Zashiki-Warashi, and a famous Japanese ghost story written in 1825 called Yotsuya Kaidan. Without understanding these two cultural references, most readers these days may just think that this is just a “typical stalker story”, and that the stalker was a human. Not so.

In Japanese mythology, a Zashiki-Warashi is a creature who appears in the form of a young child, who often lives in big houses with a long history. These creatures typically bring great wealth to the household, which makes it seem benign… but not really. If a Zashiki-Warashi should leave your house (and they can leave on a whim), then disaster will strike and your household wil lose all the wealth it’s acculmulated. So it’s a creature that is more like a double-edged sword – and the reference to Zashiki in the title of the story may hint that the stalker is a modern, twisted form of the Zashiki-Warashi.

The other reference – that of 19th-Century ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan – is a much more famous reference, due to it having influenced the storyline of famed J-Horror movie The Ring. When The Ring first came out, people waxed lyrical about the story… except people who are already familiar with Yotsuya Kaidan. Even though Yotsuya Kaidan is about a vengeful female ghost called Oiwa who comes back to relentlessly haunt her evil Samurai ex-husband, it’s really about how the re-telling of a story can give it great power. Most people miss the true story of Yotsuya Kaidan, which is about it’s author researching the history of Oiwa legends, and discovering all the various versions of it is giving form to this demonic creaure called Oiwa. Which sounds like the storyline of the movie Candyman, but variations of this idea has been around for centuries. The Ring simply represents a modernised re-telling of it.

 
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All-in-all, if you’re armed with knowledge of these two cultural facts, it may make Zashiki Onna a more interesting read. It’ll certainly help explain the ending, which may confuse some people who don’t realise that the title alone explains that the stalker isn’t human to begin with. Which then makes it not a “stalker story”, but a “ghost story”. And guess what? It’s more successful that way.

 

Recommendation: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

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I finally finished toning for the first third of Small Shen, and am taking a week off so I can work on a short story for a Bento Comics anthology. This month has really flown by… it’s 2012, but I’m wondering where all the time has gone.

I also noticed that I haven’t made a Recommendation for a while, so I’m recommending a no-brainer manga-but-not-quite today: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

 

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Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (manga)
(1982-1994, Hayao Miyazaki)

If you’re familiar with the work of Studio Ghibli, then you probably know that Nauscaa of the Valley of the Wind was the studio’s first full-length animated movie (a big success for the time). What many may not know is that the director of the film, Hayao Miyazaki, actually started the story as a serialised manga, and continued to write/draw the manga over a period of 12 years, long after the animated film was finished and screened. The end result is two separate stories that start the same, are different lengths, and also end vastly differently. Needless to say, due to the length of the manga, the themes tackled in it are alot more complex than it was in the animated film.

 


 

Plot
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where massive pollution has rendered much of the air poisonous to humans, and giant insects ruled the world. What’s left of humanity huddle together in tiny pockets, constantly at war with each other and with the denizens of the insect world. Much of this world is covered by a gigantic, poisonous forest known as the Sea of Corruption, where much of the giant insects live, but where the humans need to don gas masks to survive.

 

 

In this setting lives the main character Nausicaa, who is the princess of a small coastal kingdom called the Valley of the Wind. The sea air protects this little hamlet from the poisonous air, but trouble comes when an aircraft full of refugees escaping from the powerful kingdom of Torumekia crashes near the Valley. The aircraft was carrying precious cargo – a stone that can activate a powerful biotech monster that the Torumekians were planning to use (possibly against their arch-enemies, the Doroks). When the stone comes into Nausicaa’s posession, she becomes drawn into the battle between the Torumekians and the Doroks, under the command of Princess Kushana of Torumekia.

 

Why I Recommend this Manga
Well, it’s Hayao Miyazaki’s work. What more can I say? The man has crafted a complex eco-fable here, a highly-enjoyable piece of science fiction irregardless of which side of the global-warming fence you’re from. Perhaps the biggest joy for me was to read more about the characters I knew as a child from the animated film, and appreciate how Miyazaki was able to carve two different-but-similar stories from the same mould, each being self-contained and with a satisfactory ending. For that reason, I suggest watching the 2-hour animated film first, then reading the manga. The manga fleshes out fully what the animated film cannot, due to time constraints.

 

 

Apart from the complex story, the art is also worth a big mention. Animators always make interesting manga artist, probably because their methodology of story-telling comes from a slightly different place from those who only draw manga. I find the sequential art of animators simultaneously more complex and simple than that of manga artists. By that, I mean that while their character and world designs tend to be more simple, the way they place their characters and the details they place in their environment tend to be more complex. Miyazaki’s work is a perfect example of this.

If you’re familiar with his style, then you’ll know the man’s not particularly great at drawing faces. He has a simple style that is adequate for distinguishing different people, but that’s about it. Where he truly excels, is in his backgrounds, which are present in nearly every panel. Animators-turned-manga-artists almost never do the “character floating in a void” thing that some manga artists do. There’s also the incredible detail on the planes, the machines, the dress, the flora and giant insects that inhabit this fantasy world. The characters don’t have an awful lot of complex clothing designs on them, but they’re designed in a way that lets you know, at a glance, what faction they’re from. Either way, I have no complaints about his art.

 

 

His story-telling is also worth mentioning, since there is so much stuff happening on each page that it hardly feels like a Japanese manga. Infact, his style seems more similar to European styles, where the cinematic quality is in the detail of the individual panels, not so much in the panel-to-panel transitions. This gives the feeling of an extremely-compressed story, which may take some time to get used to. While I wouldn’t do this kind of story-telling myself, I must mention that it’s not at all a bad thing, because it’s consistent. Miyazaki is a consistent story-teller, and while things may get confusing in action sequences, there’s never any mistake about where he’s heading with the story.

All-in-all, there isn’t much more praise I can heap on Hayao Miyazaki, whether his work is in film or on the page. It’s just a matter of find his work to read, in a form that does justice to the details in his artwork. My Nausicaa books is printed in A5 format, which is smaller than I recommend. This work was originally printed in A4 format, which I believe is the best format to read it in. If possible, I suggest you find the bigger size.

 
 

 

Recommendation: The Hollywood Economist

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I’ve finished the pencils of chapters 1 & 2 of Small Shen, and is waiting for feedback. I’m also attempting to make the white bird for Angry Birds, though I probably won’t do any more Angry Bird patterns after this next one. So far, it’s looking okay… we shall see next week.

On the other hand, this week I recommend an non-fiction book. On a subject not a great deal of people think about.

 

The Hollywood Economist - coverThe Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies
(2010, Edward Jay Epstein)

I read a fair amount of non-fiction books, mostly about topics that interest me at any given moment (just about everything, all the time). I picked up this book after reading some of the columns written by journalist Edward Jay Epstein for Slate and the Financial Times, about how Hollywood runs itself as a business. I’ve been a fan of cinema for a while, but it always surprises me how very few people know how movies are made from a financial perspective. Sure, we all know about movie stars and directors and producers and screenwriters and gossip, but how many people actually know how contracts and deals are put together in Hollywood? Considering it takes at least $100 million to make a blockbuster movie these days, don’t anyone wonder where all that money comes from? And where it goes?

 


 

Why I Recommend this Book
The Hollywood Economist came along at a particular time for me, when I was looking for something to read about the business of movies in Hollywood. I wanted a book that was (a) easy to read, (b) about movies as a business, not movies as a cultural product, and (c) not about gossip or scandal, but about money, distribution and contracts. The Hollywood Economist filled all three of these niches beautifully. If you’re looking for something that will tell about the wheelin’ and dealin’ that goes on behind the scenes in Hollywood that is written in plain, simple English, this is the book to read.

 

  • Easy to Read – Most of the columns in this book comes from Epstein’s blogs and articles, so they are written in an accessible language, and are reasonably short while also being packed with information. This was a good thing from my perspective, but some people may also argue that this book suffers from lax editing, since they are all articles written separately, then thrown together for this one purpose. I don’t have an issue with it, but this also means that nearly all the articles can be found for free online, either at Epstein’s blog or on Slate. So you don’t need to buy this book to read all the content, unless you believe that journalists should be paid for their hard work. I certainly do, so I bought this book (There’s also an e-book available).
  • About Movies as a Business, Not as a Cultural Product – I believe that books about economics should be dry and readable, not emotional and opinionated. There are lots of books that claim to “rip the lid” off Hollywood, but as much as I love movies, I don’t want to read yet another article about how movies were so much better in the ’70s / before Jaws and Star Wars / before movie studios got bought up by multi-national corporations. The Hollywood Economist manages that feat nicely, by not mentioning the content of movies at all. In fact, it seems that Epstein could care less about whether Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (starring Angelina Jolie) is a good movie or not – he’s just interested in where the money came from (a combination of German tax shelters, international pre-sales, and British tax-relief), and where the money ultimately went (into a deep dark vault, where no one who was meant to get a cut of the money will ever get it). The press reported in 2001 that Tomb Raider cost $94 million to make, when Paramount only put $8.7 million of its own money in. The movie eventually made over $100 million from theatres, DVD sales, television and other rights, but on the profit-and-loss statement, it still claims to have lost money. Financial wizardry much?
  • Not about Gossip or Scandal – Whenever anyone mentions Hollywood, the first thing people think about is scandal. Who is married to who, while sleeping with whom; who went on a screaming tirade at who, etc. This book is interesting in that while it manages to mention famous names without sound like a gossip column, it also shows a side of famous Hollywood stars you never get to read about in the tabloids. Arnold Schwarzenegger got a deal that benefited him to the max for Terminator 3, whether the movie was made or not. Tom Cruise may have alienated audiences on Oprah, but the man hammered out such a deal for Mission Impossible that he made more money than the movie studio. Michael Moore got paid $21 million for Fahrenheit 9/11. And so on.

 

This book also mentions things about the movie business I didn’t know existed. Apart from the magical accounting, there’s also the importance of insurance, the fact that movies nearly always lose money at the box office (even though that’s what entertainment journalism focuses on), and how you can make money by mining bits of silver from dead movie prints. All very eye-opening, but at the same time, a tad depressing if you’re a newbie looking to break into Hollywood. Truth is, the business painted in this book is not a pretty one, and it’s also a business in transition. With the dawn of the digital age, movies are increasingly being undermined by piracy, internet competition, shrinking distribution channels and the global financial crisis. Can the movie industry survive to make money another day?

The book never answers this question, which is probably the biggest problem with it. I mentioned earlier that I didn’t mind the book being a collection of blog articles, but this has also left it without a properly tied ending. That perhaps can’t be helped since the story is still developing, but that’s also exactly why other people would recommend a previous incarnation of the book, called The Big Picture, over The Hollywood Economist. However, I personally opted for The Hollywood Economist because I needed more up-to-date information, especially when it’s about an industry that is rapidly changing.

Epstein still updates his blog with new articles, and perhaps we’ll see yet another more updated book on the same subject in the near future. For now, The Hollywood Economist is a worthy read.

Recommendation: Legend of Zelda – A Link to the Past

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Hi all, folks. In preparation for the release of Legend of Zeld: Skyward Sword, I’ve been doing a trip down memory lane of all the Zelda games I’ve played in the past (which is all of them). For those unfamiliar with Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda game franchise, it’s probably Nintendo’s best-selling franchise right after Mario, and one that constantly has critical acclaim heaped on it. The series first started in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and has spawned 14 games over the past 25 years. I’ve been a fan of the games since I was 6 years old – I played the original Legend of Zelda, though it would be years later that I finally manage to beat the last dungeon. This year is the 25th Anniversary of the Zelda franchise, and it’s apt that I choose this time to recommend what I think is the best game in the series.

Most people consider Ocarina of Time  for the N64 to be the best Zelda game of all time, but I disagree. For me, that title would always go to A Link to the Past for the SNES. It’s simply the most tightly-designed, complete Zelda game of the series, though Link’s Awakening and the Oracle are also worth a mention.

 

 

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Nintendo)
(1992, Super Nintendo)

A Link to the Past may have been released years ago, but due to its cartoony, stylised graphics, it has aged better than Ocarina of Time. You can still play the game today and not feel the technological limitations of the hardware. Let’s face it, as great a game as OoT was, that horrible 1st-generation 3D cannot be helped unless there’s a complete graphical overhaul of the game. New textures or not, it still looks like a bunch of blocky polygons walking around.

 

 


 

Plot
Legend of Zelda has a very simple plot, and that plot is basically the same in nearly all the games. The story is a subversion of age-old fairytale tropes. A young lad comes to save the princess of a kingdom from an evil usurper, and when he succeeds, gets nothing more than a “Thanks”. Woah, what happened to getting married to the princess and becoming the king? Everyone knows that you shouldn’t save a kingdom from evil unless you’re going to get a big reward at the end.

To fill in the blanks, the kingdom is called Hyrule, and the princess is called Zelda – hence the title of the game. Princess Zelda is also a subversive princess – she holds the Wisdom part of a magical artifact called the Triforce, three golden triangles which are the holy relics of Hyrule. The hero is called Link, and he holds the Triforce of Courage, which enables him to journey through devious dungeons and defeat fearsome monsters in his quest to rescue Zelda. The villain is sometimes Ganondorf, a thief who has stolen the Triforce of Power. Mix and match these ingredients, and you get the basics of a Zelda game.

To date, Link has saved the world 14 times, and has never gotten anything for it, not even second billing in the title (save once). Mark of a true hero, I suppose, but it also accounts for the streak of melancholy that runs through all the games. Unlike other standard fantasy stories, there is always a sense of sadness and loss with the hero’s victory. Link may be an everyman who never talks in any of the games, but his green hat and tunic makes him probably the mostly widely-recognised and beloved character in all of video-gaming.

 

Why I Recommend this Game
I love Action-Adventure games, especially when they involve lots of exploring, secrets and puzzles. And the Zelda games are pretty much all of that in one neat little package – you traverse a World Map, go through multiple maze-like dungeons, collect new items/weapons, discover hidden areas, and beat up horrible monsters. I like to explore virtual worlds with varied environments, and the Zelda games have deserts, swamps, towns, glaciers, mountains, woods and rivers to explore, with plenty of side-quests and mini-games to go on. You meet all kinds of weird and interesting characters, listen to their stories, and sometimes help them find whatever it is they’re looking for. It’s like an RPG, but an action game. Why don’t they make more games like this?

I mentioned Castlevania: Symphony of the Night previously as the style of game I like, and Zelda is pretty much like that game, but with a simplier inventory screen and a top-down view instead of a side-view. Unlike Castlevania, which are nearly all action-exploration games, the Zelda games always include a fair amount of puzzle-solving, which a lot of people love. Not content with just going from place to place, room to room killing baddies? Well, try and figure how to navigate this series of corridors, collecting keys and stepping on stones that will cause previously-blocked doors to open. Not sure how to get into this particular dungeon, or this part of the map? Have a good think about it, try every action you can think of, and if all else fails, do something else for a while. Your sword not working on a particular monster? Try using some of the items in your inventory. Needless to say, there is a certain sense of satisfaction you get after solving a puzzle on your own. Some of them are deceptively simple, but that’s what makes it so brilliant – the many “Ah-hah!” moments on your first play through it.

Despite the simple graphics, the game also manages to be surprisingly atmospheric. The Super Nintendo may not have been the most sophisticated piece of hardware out there, but it has many graphical effects that made it the best game system for 2D games. From the opening sequence, when you wake up on a dark rainy night due to a telepathic call for help from Princess Zelda, to the mysterious fog of the Lost Woods, to the dark, twisted nature of the Dark World… the art style is never inconsistent, and while it can get fairly dark, it’s never truly unsettling. At its heart, the Legend of Zelda series has managed to stay PG-13 all through its life, which turns out to be a boon rather than a bane – its aging fans have stayed fans, but it’s still very successful in drawing in newer, younger fans. The same can’t be said for other game series, so eager to be seen as “adult” they forget that “being adult” has nothing to do with sex and violence.

 

 

Which brings me to the reason why I chose A Link to the Past as the best Zelda game in the series. Mind you, it has tough competition, but in the end I chose it simply because… it has the best ending. Yes, it sounds like a superficial reason for choosing a game, but the ending of a game can tell you a great deal about the course of its development. Ocarina of Time is a great game, but I can’t help but feel that the final dungeon is criminally short, whereas the final dungeon of A Link to the Past is satisfying long, with a huge boss fight at the end, and a really long ending that shows everyone who appeared in the game. ALttP is the game that I feel the developers had the time to truly polish to perfection before they shoved it out the door, and there wasn’t a single moment in the game where I wondered “Where did the rest of this go?”. Granted, the Gameboy games Link’s Awakening and the Oracle games also felt very complete, but the graphics are kinda sore on the eyes, whereas the art style of ALttP means it can can still hold up today. Which is why 13 Zelda games later, it’s still my #1 game of the series.