The regular news: I’ve nearly finished the toning for Chapter 4. Once I finish I’ll post some samples up, but right now I’m taking a breather between inking while reading manga.

 

The shocking news: For this manga recommendation, I’m actually recommending Dragon Ball. Yes, you read right, DRAGON BALL. And I shall justify myself by saying that I never meant to recommend Dragon Ball. I was going to recommend a Saimon Fumi series, but on my way to the bookshelf I tripped over an old pile of Dragon Ball manga, which I haven’t seen in YEARS. This was the first manga I bought. My old memories of Dragon Ball has been soured by the never-ending anime series and the lousy manga plotting, but this was different. This was the EARLIER Dragon Ball volumes – basically DragonBall in its glory days (before it fell victim to editorial mandates). And when I sat down to give my memory a jog, I was shocked to find how GOOD it was. And so here we have the sad story of the manga that should have ended at volume 28, but instead got dragged beyond all redemption to volume 42.

 

Dragon Ball (Akira Toriyama)
42 volumes, but only 1-28 worth reading

Before I start, I have to draw a clear and definitive line between Dragon Ball the MANGA, and Dragon Ball the MARKETING JUGGERNAUT. The former is the manga, by Akira Toriyama, and nothing more. The latter would include the anime, the video games, the action-figures, the trading cards, the posters, CDs, memorabilia, marketing tie-ins… and just about everything that makes people who have never seen Dragon Ball hate it. It’s essential to make this difference, because what makes Dragon Ball a good manga is also what makes it a terrible anime (and all-consuming marketing monster). If your primary conception of Dragon Ball comes from the anime, then you’ve been tainted and probably don’t want to read the manga. On the other hand, if you LOVE the anime, then the manga is just one more part of the franchise. So therefore, this recommendation are for the non-fans only.

 

Plot
Everyone knows the story of DragonBall, including the village idiot in some Ethiopia basin. It’s an action-adventure and martial arts extravaganza which started, for better or for worse, the whole “fighting manga” craze in Shonen manga. The main character is Son Goku, a naive but lethal fighter who is six degrees of separation from the Monkey King of Chinese myth. It chronicles his adventures in finding the seven Dragon Balls – mythical orbs that will grant the user any wish when collected in full. On the way, there is first alot of adventure, then alot of fighting, and Goku himself grows from a young child to an adult with a wife and son. But none of that’s important. What IS important is that the first third of this manga is good, the middle third great, and the last third garbage. Infact, the last third has almost nothing to do with the mythical Dragon Balls – a telling sign the author (or should I say the editors) have lost the plot.

To make it easier, I’ve loosely divided it into 4 parts, with brief plot summaries.
Vol 1-16: Goku as a child and teenager. Lots of adventure, toilet humour, goofy stories, and extended bursts of gravity defying kung fu at the “Tenka-ichi Tournament”. Kinda fun – read it to understand the second part.
Vol 17-28: Shifts drastically in tone as Goku becomes a husband and father – this story arc is much darker and dramatic than before. Turns out Goku is a member of an alien race called the Saiyans, whose planet was destroyed by the arch-villain of this arc, Freezer. Probably the best part of this arc is the race by differing factions on Planet Namek to collect the Dragon Balls. This is what makes me recommend Dragon Ball as a manga.
Vol 29-35: The Androids and Cell arc. Bearable, but getting sillier by the volume.
Vol 36-42: Almost undoes the earlier greatness with it’s crapness. My quality of life WOULD be better if this never existed.

 

Why I recommend this story
If Dragon Ball ended at Volume 28, it would have been regarded as an all-time action-adventure classic. Instead, it ended at volume 42, a shadow of it’s former self. Along the way, it has been tagged violent, tasteless, crudely drawn, testosterone-fuelled, never-ending, and a monument to marketing excess. Which are all images fostered by the anime – so pervasive it upstages the original material and condemns it in the minds of people who prefer plot and character.

The intense irony of it, and I felt it keenly when I re-discovered the manga, is that none of the assertions are true. The original Dragon Ball does feature violence and testosterone, but it also has tight plotting and strong characterisations. In fact, what many people don’t realise is that Dragon Ball was always about plot and character, and not about fighting. What it does heads and shoulders above it’s imitators is its USE of action adventure to draw out personalities and set the stage. It is NOT about violence for the sake of violence, or at least it wasn’t until volume 28 onwards. It’s a sad thing that those who followed in its footsteps thought Dragon Ball was popular because of the action. No, it was popular because of the plotting and characterisations.

The part I recommend most is Dragon Ball Z (vol 17-28), which has the best share of dramatic moments. It’s also extra heavy on fighting, but if you compare this arc with the current Shonen Jump front-runners, you’ll find that there actually isn’t much “fighting” happening. It gives the IMPRESSION there’s alot of fighting because the characters mostly interact with each other through martial arts, but even so, the fighting exists in small bursts rather than extended battles. No one fight for more than 10 pages before a plot point happens and things change direction.

The best part of this is the arc on Planet Namek, where there is a race by competing parties to find the Dragon Balls and to keep others from finding it. The fact that there is a mega-villain far stronger than all other characters put together means that there is an element of strategy happening. Yes, that’s right – people SERIOUSLY using their brains in a fighting manga. They run away rather than face a stronger opponent. Is this against the sacred “He may be 10x stronger than me, but I can still beat him through persistence” mantra championed by the likes of Naruto? Yes it is, because Dragon Ball Z didn’t start this mantra. In Dragon Ball Z, weak people and idiots get pounded into the ground no matter how persistent they are. Looking at the plotting, it simply has none of the deux es machina that other fighting manga depend upon for plot. You know the story – someone gets pounded by the villain, but they then “find” some superskill while they’re taking a beating, and then somehow turns the tables on the villain. Right. Well, none of that here, except at the very end of the arc which was hinted at all along anyway.

All I’ve done is debunk some myths of Dragon Ball, and perhaps that’s enough for the average manga reader to be motivated enough to give it a try. Ofcourse, if you’re not an action-adventure fan, you’ll never like this regardless of what I say. Dragon Ball may be strong on plot and character, but it still falls squarely into the “tough action man” genre. There are strutting villains, bombastic speeches, grand entrances, astonished bystanders, cannon-fodder characters and all the things you’ll expect to find in a story about good triumphing over evil. What makes it a cut above the rest is the dynamic Jackie Chan-style action – it looks like violence, but is actually balletic martial arts manouvers. And let’s face it, a decade since the end of Dragon Ball Z, and Akira Toriyama is still the best action manga-artist you’ll EVER find. In terms of clarity and dynamism, none can compare to what he does in Dragon Ball. And he does it all without oceans of blood too, which is found in 90% of all other fighting manga for reasons I cannot fathom.

Dragon Ball was so phenonmenal because it made action adventure into something with an appeal to people of all ages. Believe me, that’s a lot harder to do that it looks.

 

I normally don’t review movies, but today is an exception because I just saw Hayao Miyazaki’s latest OMG-movie, “Howl’s Moving Castle”. Don’t ask me how I saw it, especially when it’s not due to be released in Australia until the end of the year – all I can tell you is that when it DOES become available, I’ll be obediently going to the cinemas and buying the DVD, so no worries mate.

Seeing the movie was quite an experience, as it is with all Miyazaki movies, but I feel compelled to write about this one because “Howl’s Moving Castle” is quite different to any other Miyazaki movie I’ve seen. That’s not to say it’s better than other Miya-sama movies; quite the opposite. In fact, at the risk of blasphemy, I’ll have to say that this Miyazaki movie has the best animation and the worst plot of any Studio Ghibli film I’ve seen.

Some things that appears in this movie that I haven’t seen in previous Miyazaki movies. Firstly, mutual KISSING – I’ve NEVER seen lovers kiss in a Miyazaki movie before. In Porco Rosso, Fio pecks Marco’s mouth when he wasn’t expecting it, and San gives mouth-to-mouth feeding to Ashitaka, but HEY LOOK! This is two consenting adults kissing! Woah. The second is a male lead that is at least a head taller than the female lead – most male and female leads in the past have been around the same height. And a shockingly-bishonen male lead – not that I’m complaining. I’m moving into Howl’s Castle myself. Permanently.

Now, there’s bound to be people out there who LOVE this film to death, and I do adore some parts of it too. Namely anything involving the wizard Howl, who is quite a departure from the typical Miyazaki hero. It’s also a love story with a good-looking male lead, which gets points. And let’s face it, Miyazaki is simply incapable of making a boring movie. I was never bored during this movie, though I was certainly confused – and here comes the basis of my criticism for the plot.

For those living under a rock, “Howl’s Moving Castle” is based on a children’s fantasy novel of the same name by British writer Dianne Wynn Jones. It’s un-read by me, though if some other British fantasy writers I’ve read is any indication, this won’t be a Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy. Instead, it’s the kind of fantasy I adore – a deconstruction of fairy tales centering on the eldest of 3 daughters called Sophie Hatter. She is a hat-maker who has a spell cast on her by a witch, turning her into a 90 year-old woman who then leaves home and shacks up with the wizard Howl of the title. Howl is wandering around the Welsh countryside in a giant moving castle, powered by a Fire Demon called Calcifer, who himself is bound to Howl by a contract he can’t reveal. He and Sophie make a pact to break each other’s contracts, and this forms the basis of the story.

Now, this sort of thing makes a rockin’ story, and Miyazaki seems to have followed the plot up until the point I’ve described. However, it’s the second-half of it that utterly baffles me. Many things happen, yet they happen almost randomly, without a set of rules to abide by or any explanation of the goings-on that you would normally expect in a magical-world movie. This contrasts with “Spirited Away”, which was itself about a magical world; yet that world had established rules that the audience can at least intuit without being given an explanation. Here, it’s a complete free-fall.

There’s a war going on in the background, but how and why it started is not explained. There’s a cursed prince in the last 3 minutes, but who cursed him and why is not explained. What’s up with the Wicked Witch of the Waste, and what does she have against Howl? Howl dyes his hair, and then emits green goo all over the place in a creepy scene, but that itself is not much explained. In fact, the green goo scene shouldn’t have been in there at all – Howl in that scene was acting SO differently from his earlier scenes that it defied common sense. Sure, he’s upset he’s no longer blonde. But why is being a blonde so important to him in the first place? It’s a pity, because all these unanswered questions means that character development suffer. It’s hard to get a firm image of the characters in your mind when the rules of the world they inhabit is always up in the air and doing flip-flops.

Now, I’m GENUINELY curious about these questions, because there seems to be a HUGE backstory to all this. I feel if only I can get my hand on the novel I would know why everything happens (I have a feeling that the book is going to be flying off the shelves, though for all the wrong reasons). Above all, I wonder if the plotting problems came from cultural barriers in Miyazaki’s adaptation of the story. British children’s fantasy is often very strongly rooted in, well, English themes, especially fairy tales – the very idea of turning Sophie into a 90 year-old is a device for poking at traditional fairy tale roles. No doubt there’s plenty of word play and literature references along the way as well. Trouble is: did Miyazaki make a note of this? Or did he think it was interesting for a young girl to be turned into a grandma, and nothing else? The interviews so far seems to suggest so. Miyazaki has no obligation to use the same themes in the movie as the book, but if he had somehow misinterpreted the story, than that may explain the confusion.

“Howl’s Moving Castle” is a good movie, but unlike his previous other movies, not a great movie. Miyazaki is incapable of making bad movies, but there is no doubt the plot of this one does NOT make sense in the same way his previous 7 Ghibli movies have made sense. Is it still worth seeing – definately, the open-endedness probably means that people will walk away with different interpretations of it. And ofcourse, it’s one of the most beautifully animated movies around. That itself is worth the price of admission.

It’s been a while since my last manga recommendation, so here is an all-time favourite: Slam Dunk. Yes, believe it or not, I’m actually recommending a sports manga.

 

Slam Dunk (Takehiko Inoue)
31 Volumes

Slam Dunk is available in English, but only in very limited numbers. Sports manga seems to be fairly popular in the English; just not this one. Why is a complete mystery to me – I normally hate sports manga, but I loved Slam Dunk, and so do millions of people who has read it.

 

Plot
The hero of the story, Sakuragi Hanamichi, is your typical rough-edged delinquent with a heart of gold and a core of inner strength. His greatest goal in life is to find a girlfriend, and to walk her home every day. However, he is constantly rebuffed by every girl he encounters, until he becomes smitten with the younger sister of the captain of the school basketball team. This girl is a basketball fan, and when she tells him she adores basketball, he decides to take on the sport to get the girl. What he didn’t expect was for him to fall in love with the game and discover a talent for the sport he never knew he had.

 

Why I recommend this
Darn it, I just made it sound like the 100 million other sports manga out there. I’ve never liked sports manga largely because of the formula plots and the whole Japanese “sports philosophy”, which dictates that your sport of choice must be your whole life and you must take your rivalries and failures very, very personally. Not a healthy frame of mind, and if you’re not interested in sports in the first place, forget it. It may then come as a surprise to readers that Slam Dunk falls squarely into this category.

I was biased against this manga when I first saw it. It’s fantastically well-drawn with clear and dynamic basketball scenes, but it was still a sports manga, and that turned me off. However, when I started reading it, I discovered that it was genuinely different to other sports manga I’ve encountered. First of all, it was actually funny. Thank god this manga doesn’t take everything seriously. Sakuragi is one of my favourite characters because while he is genuinely talented, he does a vast number of stupid and goofy things while on his way to becoming a true sportsman. This comedy aspect is what makes Slam Dunk easy to pick up, as well as the good characterisation and excellent character designs. Most of the characters are archetypal types, but personalities are sharply drawn and immediately engaging. They also grow and change during the course of the story, especially Sakuragi. In terms of craftsmanship, Slam Dunk is the tops. I can’t think of any aspect of it which can be improved in terms of story-telling, characterisation and art.

Which brings me to why I recommend this manga in the first place. When I read Slam Dunk, I had no criticisms of it because for the Sports genre, it does everything you’ll expect from that genre prefectly. In essence, Slam Dunk is a mastery of the sports genre. If you’re out there looking for the perfectly-balanced sports manga which combines comedy, drama, romance, good characters, good sports action and interesting sporting strategy, then look no further than Slam Dunk. Heck, if you’re out looking for a good story, you can also checkout Slam Dunk as it isn’t anywhere near as single-minded as other sports manga. It is a perfect example how something that sits squarely in a certain genre can have appeal to everyone.

I’m more influenced by movies than by manga, so when asked to draft up a list of favourite villains, movie villains fly to my mind. Most of my stories don’t have villains, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like seeing thoroughly evil, interesting people on the silver screen. Oddly enough, I dislike seeing mad, bad villains in manga. I also dislike seeing mad, bad villains in movies which I don’t believe are up to my high standards (I tolerate bad manga, but I don’t tolerate bad movies). The exact reason for this is difficult to pin down… it could just be down to influences. Being influenced by movies rather than manga, in my opinion, is a good thing. Helps me avoids the pitfalls of manga cliches.

I have made some strict rules for my compilation of this list:

 

• The villain must be a MOVIE character. This includes animation, ofcourse.
• They cannot be the film’s main character. They must be a secondary character. Sorry, Travis Bickle from “Taxi Driver”.
• They have to be irredeemably bad/evil, and not just “misunderstood” or “tortured”. Therefore, characters who are just enemies of the protagonists in a movie may not necessarily qualify.
• They have to be humanoid, or at least exhibit characteristics of a human. That rules out the Aliens in the “Aliens” Trilogy, King Kong from “King Kong, the Shark in “Jaws”, and countless other creatures that go bump in the night.
• They have to be distinct, unique individuals. They can’t be vague entities or energy masses that other antagonists in the movie channel as inspiration for bad behaviour. Out goes Satan and friends in endless films, including “The Exorcist” and “Rosemary’s Baby”.
• They must be memorable, or at least have something about them that makes them memorable. This is arbitrary, but I’ll justify my choices. Being ordinarily evil isn’t good enough to make this list.
• They had better be in a good movie in the first place. Again, this is arbitrary. And I’ve never encountered a superhero villain that wasn’t corny in some way, either.

 

Other than that, there are no limits on when the movies were made, where they came from or what language they speak (if they speak at all).

 

Best Movie Villains (In No Particular Order)

Reverend Harry Powell (Night of the Hunter, 1955)
Yes, first on the list is a guy you’ve probably never heard of. The exploits of the sinister and thoroughly evil Reverend Harry Powell, however, has since passed into legend. Maybe you’ve heard of him without knowing it. Take his hands, for example, on which are tattooed the words “L-O-V-E” and the word “H-A-T-E”. And then he’ll say, in that smooth-talking, unsettling manner of his, “Do you want to hear the story of left-hand and right-hand”? That he’s in a movie which resembles a nightmare only adds to the effect. Night of the Hunter has some scenes in it that has become a prototype for endless other similar scenes in lesser horror movies.

 

 

Rotwang (Metropolis, 1926)
Ah, the grand-daddy of all mad scientists. Metropolis was made in 1926, decades before anyone had conceived of “special effects”, and yet, it is one of the most visionary sci-fi movies ever made. The hellish skyline of Metropolis became a prototype for zillions of other sci-fi movies, and from its chief antagonist, Rotwang, came legions of synthetic-limbed, shuffling loonies with over-the-top mannerisms and bubbling beakers. Rotwang is actually more sympathetic than the other characters on this list, but seeing that he inspired so many other unsympathetic characters, he still scores second place.

 

 

Darth Vader (The Original Star Wars Triology, 1977)
No list of Movie Villains will be complete without Darth Vader. I personally don’t like the Star Wars movies much (I’m so going to get flamed for this), since I prefer my sci-fi cerebral and complex – but Darth Vader is just so cool. His black facial armour and sinister breathing manner totally ownz Luke Skywalker. And he has a better light sabre too.

 

 

Bill (Kill Bill, 2003/4)
Apart from the dastardly Bill, this spot also includes Elle Driver, Oren Ishii, and Gogo Yubari. Bill and co are the epitome of the mad, bad villain – and I love charismatic and flamboyant villains over sinister and psychotic ones. They strut, they look good in leather, they are sonuvabitches (or just bitches), and they make no apologies for killing people left, right and centre. This may sound shocking, but I love characters who kill indiscriminately, stylishly, and with minimal angst and mess for housekeeping to clean up. Bill and co embody that (unfortunately, the Bride doesn’t. Too messy).

 

 

Norman Bates (Psycho, 1960)
Not the new Psycho, but the original one directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Psycho was one of the most shocking films of the 60s, and it’s villain, Norman Bates, was an original for that time period. If you already know the story then you’ll know why. Norman Bates falls strongly into the “mad slasher psycho” category, but is way more memorable because he (a) actually has a personality of sorts and (b) genuinely appears to be a likeable young man. Recent slasher movies always introduce the chief antagonist as some no-personality, hooded stalker who conspicuously wears sub-arctic gear in tropical climates (meanwhile, teenaged female victims run around screaming in wet T-shirts). Their motives for mass slaughter are always murky and at the convenience of the plot. Psycho, on the other hand, makes Norman into someone with an agenda, and even has him interact with the other characters as a normal person would – hence, is one of the best thrillers ever made. The last shot in the movie, or Norman, creeped me out. One of the few serial killers in movies that I find genuinely scary (instead of funny).

 

 

Hannibal Lector (Silence of the Lambs, 1992)
Hannibal the Cannibal only scores a number 6, and only the Hannibal from Silence of the Lambs count. Hannibal was alot scarier when Clarence was the main character and he was a psychopath who did artful things with people’s faces. That he was in the same movie as another psychopath called Buffalo Bill didn’t minimise his charisma, as Hannibal almost stole the movie. Part of his appear is because as a hyper-intelligent psychologist, he gives the impression he can dissect a person’s brain without even laying a fingernail on them. Hannibal would make interesting conversation at boring cocktail parties (if he doesn’t eat everyone there).

 

 

HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968)
Not a psychopath, and not a flamboyant villain. But a coldly logical, homicidal computer. HAL 9000 is thoroughly evil, because while he knows the logical definition of “goodness” and “morality”, he deliberate chooses to act against it. His behaviour is a result of his flawed programming, which amongst computers, I believe, makes him a psychopath. HAL gets points for singing “Daisy” better than I can. It happens to be the only villain on this list with a moving “death” scene.

 

 

T-1000 (Terminator 2, 1991)
Arnold Schwarzneggar gets battered by it, and it would waste that totally lame terminator in Terminator 3 (which has all the menace of a walking, talking Barbie). Nothing beats the Mercury Man. As evil machines go, the T-1000 doesn’t have as much personality as HAL 9000, but it makes up for it by being utterly unrelenting and almost impossible get rid of. Almost impossible, that is.

 

 

Wicked Witch of the West (Wizard of Oz, 1939)
I used to be scared of this green-faced creature. Ofcourse, now it’s just a laughing matter, especially when you see her dissolve into a puddle of goo when splashed with water. Nevertheless, the Wicked Witch remains a staple of villainy in a film that has been seen by more than 2 billion people on this planet. On the other hand, the musical “Wicked” turns her into a heroine, so it’s interesting to see that there’s a lot of sympathy for her out there.

 

 

The Evil Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937)
I hated Snow White in that movie. She voice sounded so sickenly sweet that I wanted to barf when she started singing. The Evil Queen, on the other hand, was much more interesting. Just look at her, I mean, especially when she waves her hands in front of the Mirror Mirror, and then plots Snow White’s death. My favourite scene is when she flees from the dwarves. One of the greatest animated films out there, and a sad reminder of the crap that Disney churns out these days.