New Project: Future-Retro Hero Story

All right, new project time. This series has been on my to-do list since the very beginning: Takehito Ito's Future-Retro Hero Story. It's the precursor to Outlaw Star, and as such might be characterized as a juvenile fantasy, versus an adolescent one. In other words, they both have spell guns and spaceships, but FRHS tends more to slapstick than it does toward violence.

Why do I find FRHS intriguing? Ito has a gift for world-building, for universe-building. As much as I love Star Wars and Star Trek, we need more sci-fi universes, ones that are full of their creator's inspirations and idiosyncrasies. Though Ito borrows a lot of elements from American pulp sci-fi (Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future stories being perhaps the wellspring), there's an original universe here. And the pulpiness, the pulpiness. I love it whenever one culture's innovation is viewed through the lens of another, entirely different culture. (I feel compelled to mention Yuichi Hasegawa's Maps, which is earlier and arguably more pulp than FRHS, with absolutely tremendous scale. I would probably never have discovered it if not for ebookjapan promotions. Anyway, another great series that will never be translated.) That said, FRHS does appear to suffer from pacing issues. It may very well have been meant to be a 20-volume epic, but as it turned out, fortune was not so kind to the project.

FRHS was first serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Comic Comp magazine, an outgrowth of their computer gaming mag Comptiq. It seems likely that it was one of the inaugural serializations, starting in 1988, though I haven't been able to find confirmation of whether or not that's true. But in 1992 there was a shakeup at Kadokawa Shoten: Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, apparently passed over for the throne, quit and formed his own company, Media Works, where he was joined by many of the Kadokawa artists and creators. As if that weren't enough, in 1993 Haruki Kadokawa, the big cheese, was arrested and later convicted on drug charges. It would seem that FRHS was caught up in the drama -- the obi on volume 5 proudly proclaims the greenlighting of an OVA, one that never came to fruition.

That fifth and final volume of FRHS published under the Comic Comp imprint covered chapters through early 1991. No further volumes appeared until the entire series was released under Shueisha's Home imprint over the course of 1996. Where were the chapters published in the meantime? Unlike most collected tanks, which give the date and magazine of initial publication, these volumes are strangely silent. Japanese Wikipedia claims that FRHS restarted serialization in Ultra Jump come 1995. This is reasonable given that the Outlaw Star manga appeared in Ultra Jump, but then why would they publish the tanks under the Home imprint? Mysteries, I tell you.

Anyway, as far as I know, there are three editions of FRHS out there: 1) 5 volumes, Comp Comics (Kadokawa), incomplete 2) 8 volumes, Home Comics (Shueisha), complete, 3) 5 volumes, Home Bunko (Shueisha), complete. We'll be working from the latter edition, which is dubbed the "Director's Cut". I thought at first the Director's Cut was distinguished by the little scribbles in the margins -- yes, those are from the author and not from the scanlator -- but it seems to have more to do with the reformatting of 8 volumes into 5: additional intro and outro pages have been added. By the way, these volumes are published without chapter numbers, so the release chapter splitting may be arbitrary and capricious.

This is a joint with You're Welcome Scans. Without them I'd probably end up sitting on stuff a lot longer than necessary. Next up is a quick, stopgap TL check of the old Jinmen-Juushin material, then we're into unexplored territory. Should be a fun ride.

Suddenly, Poncho.

Finally got my grubby mitts on this rare bird. Thanks to the anon who posted a thread all those years ago. That feel when you will never get chocolate from Tomekichi

Manga eBook World Tour: eBookJapan

The first stop on our tour is eBookJapan. The good: massive selection, including major publishers' crown jewels. Not so good: volumes generally cost the same as physical manga, with maybe a 20% discount for older releases (like, really old). The bad: the Android app has terrible ratings. Personally I haven't had that much trouble with it, but it's rather bare-bones in functionality compared to competitors' apps.

This is going to be a lazy review because I'm just going to complain. When I try to make a purchase on the tablet, the website just gives up. When I try to purchase on PC instead, it tells me that I need to install the PC app. Maybe I'm being hardheaded, but I think this is really stupid because every other eBook store I've tried is perfectly happy to let me pay on the PC and read elsewhere.

Anyway, I'll probably come back to these guys at some point.

Manga eBook World Tour

I got an Android tablet recently, so I've been exploring the various manga eBook options in a bit more depth. Before that, I did play with the various PC eBook apps, but now I can say for certain that the reading experience on a desktop or laptop is inferior to that on a tablet. Since I've dipped my toes into various eBook systems on both sides of the Pacific, I'm going to get up on my soapbox to say a little about each one.

But first, I'll talk about the general state of things. The biggest problem with eBooks for manga is image quality. Tone moire is a huge downer, and most of the stuff I've bought exhibits moire to some degree. Some are just plain bad scans though, and it's the lack of attention to detail that keeps me from enthusiastically going digital.

The second issue is DRM. The failure of JManga shows that the DRM zealots are absolutely right: you have little control over the content you've purchased. If the store goes belly-up or the licensing server goes down, you're SOL. So you have to ask yourself, is this store/service going to be around in five years? With the bigger players, there's less of a risk (you would hope), but some of the little guys might be questionable in that regard.

A few years ago I wouldn't have even considered eBooks, but after moving house a couple of times, I'm starting to come around. Books are light individually, but heavy in aggregate. And since manga tends to multiply like rabbits, it's a particularly painful situation. While I'm not really sure what I'm going to do in the long run, I'm exploring my options. This eBook tour is part of it.

Suddenly, AX

I finally got my hands on the first volume of the AX Anthology yesterday, chock full of some of the trippiest comics ever made. The tale of the obtaining is long and harrowing: I made a preorder on Amazon in January. All seemed well, with an email in May saying that the expected date had been moved forward a couple of weeks to the end of July. Come the end of July, however, an email appeared that asked, "we haven't been able to get this, do you still want us to try?" I thought the situation was a little odd, as Top Shelf reportedly was selling copies at San Diego Comic-Con, but I continued to wait. At the beginning of August, Amazon gave me a new ship date of mid-September, only to deliver another "we haven't been able to get this" message on September 10th. Then two weeks later, the order was cancelled by them for lack of availability.

Then about a week ago, I was ordering some other books on Amazon, and oh hey look the AX Anthology is available and in stock. The rest, as they say, is history.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, New Edition

You may have heard about this: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has been republished in Japan. This new edition, literally "new edition" in Japanese (新装版, shinsouban), is 10 (thicker) volumes versus the original 14. It contains all the color artwork from the magazine serialization, plus some little rough sketches here and there on the pages between chapters. The covers are all new, and as the ad on the right (from the August issue of Afternoon) says, the concluding chapter "Touge" will be published in volume 10 — it appeared over a year after YKK ended serialization, so it's never been collected into a tankoubon. Basically, think of this New Edition as a new print run of the series, with minimal extras.

So the question is, should you buy this? If you're a die-hard YKK fanboy, then the answer is obviously yes, especially if you don't own the previous edition, which is long out of print. (Even if you do, don't let that stop you.) For everyone else, we can ask a more pointed question: is YKK ever going to get licensed for publication in English? I've paid a bit more attention to licensing this season than I have in the past, and I have to say I'm pessimistic. Vertical's Ed Chavez asked for suggestions on Twitter and elsewhere a few months ago, and the ensuing conversation was instructive. First, publishers aren't going to license something that isn't going to turn a profit (duh). Tied to this are the up-front licensing fees, which are directly proportional to the number of volumes involved. If we presume something like $10K per volume, that's quite a chunk of change. Second, the majority of sales come from major retail channels — big stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble. While it's unlikely that YKK's content will keep it off of shelves, booksellers are certainly going to wonder if it's going to sell. While YKK is on top ten lists the internet over, the question remains: will it sell to a wider audience?

I firmly believe that Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is the apotheosis of the slice-of-life genre, and a brilliant example of the possibilities inherent to the medium. It's unfortunate that no publisher has had the guts to bring it over, and while I'd like to believe that it will happen, it's hard to say. If you're thinking about buying the New Edition, you've probably got a year or so to make your decision; due to the vagaries of the Japanese manga market, only the most popular books are kept continuously in print, and the rest eventually sell out. As for how to get your hands on Japanese-language manga, I've started writing an overview that you can find under "Pages." I hope it'll be helpful.

New project: Kabu no Isaki

This has been in the works for a while now. I won't have time until the weekend to write the blurb I've got planned, but for now, have some links.

Two weekends later, and here we are. I know I promised a blurb, but now I realize it might not be a particularly cohesive one. I'm no Herb Caen, but hell, let's give the Herb Caen format a shot.

KABU NO ISAKI: Hitoshi Ashinano's latest work, serialized in Kodansha's Afternoon magazine. It seems to run every other month, and currently there are two collected volumes out. It's about a young man, Isaki, who flies his neighbor's plane around.

TEN TIMES LARGER: For unclear reasons, the earth has become ten times larger. That's what the back cover of the manga says. So everything is ten times farther away than it used to be, and mountains are ten times taller. The Tokyo Tower is ten times taller, but it's unclear (to me at least) why and how the human habitations are still normally sized.

Shichirigahama from Inamuragasaki. By WP Commons user Urashimataro. Public Domain.

SHICHIRIGAHAMA: A beach that actually has an article on Wikipedia: Shichirigahama. Evidently it's a decent surfing spot. What's interesting, though, is that the place is literally named "Seven Ri Beach," where a ri is an archaic unit of measurement equal to 3.9 kilometers. Thus you would expect the beach to be 27 kilometers long, but as Wikipedia notes, it's only one-tenth of that length. Blow up the world by ten, though, and the name becomes accurate.

MOUNTAIN FLYING: In chapter six, Isaki catches some major air. From reading around, mountain flying is not for the faint of heart; and it probably killed Steve Fossett. A phenomenon that's particularly interesting (and particularly relevant to this chapter) is the so-called lee wave. Also known as mountain waves, these are wind currents that form downwind from a mountain range. Gliders catching such waves can attain amazing heights, reaching altitudes of tens of thousands of feet. Reading about these waves has been quite fascinating. First there's the Sierra Rotors Project, a NSF-funded study to determine the characteristics of the waves that form over the Owens Valley; as Shiro-san notes, they're not always there. Then we have writer Nate Ferguson's article on Soar Minden, an outfit closer to Lake Tahoe that puts you in a glider. (Naturally there are Youtube videos of everything these days.)

PIPER SUPER CUB: I don't know a whole lot about these planes, but the internet sure does. There's a Wikipedia article, as well as a surprisingly active enthusiast website. A few data points: introduced 1949, cruise speed 185 km/h / 115 mph, range 735 km / 460 mi.

GEOGRAPHY: Japanese geography is also something that I don't know a whole lot about. We have a few data points to work from. In the first chapter, Isaki flies to the Tokyo Tower, having just returned from Jogashima in the first pages. And in chapter six, Isaki and Shiro-san go to Shichirigahama.

That's a static map with locations pointed out. I haven't figured out how to get a dynamic map with multiple locations, but here's a dynamic one anyway.

View Larger Map

DISTANCE: Where do Isaki and company live? The most pertinent datapoint comes from chapter one, where Isaki says that he went 120 km roundtrip to Jogashima. That makes for 60 km one-way, which we then divide by ten to get the "unstretched" world distance. Looking at the map, the folks in KnI live somewhat north of Miura City, south of Mount Ōgusu. Café Alpha is somewhere around there too, as we can tell from chapter one of YKK:

PROJECT PLANS: Volume two is out, and I have it in hand. The plan is to read and translate the entire volume over winter break, and then start the editing process. I also would like to produce a HQ version of volume one, but naturally that's a lower priority.

Kekkaishi hath restored my faith in shounen manga.

That is all.

Discommunication Seireihen chapter 1

Too tired at the moment to write anything meaningful. Will try again tomorrow.

(edit)

It took forever, but it's finally here: the first chapter of Discommunication Seireihen. I've been curious about Riichi Ueshiba's works ever since reading the mind-blowingness of Yume Tsukai, and where better to start than the preceding series? I was originally going to say more here, but writing the notes depleted my word supply, so I'll just opine that Seireihen is plenty crazy, but not quite as disturbing as the first arc of Yume Tsukai.

It's kinda ridiculous, but it's been nearly a year to the day I started this effort. Several things got in the way. The biggest obstacle: learning enough Japanese. Smaller things: distractions. Somehow I ended up deciding to scanlate a chapter of Railgun, which was a rather painful adventure with WWWJDIC. (WWWJDIC > sliced bread.) And then I spent a lot of time on a chapter of Sing Yesterday For Me -- got it to around 75% done at the beginning of February, but then I had to go on a business trip. When I got back, NCIS had beaten me to the punch. Sigh. But they're a good group and they'll release faster than I ever could. Anyway, real life has been kicking my ass since February, and it's only recently that I've been able to use my free time effectively.

Chapter 2 will be along in a few weeks, unless I decide to work on another distraction.

The future is now

Things are changing apace in the world of licensed manga. I was kind of shocked to find that Rumiko Takahashi's latest series, Kyoukai no Rinne, is already available to read in English, direct from Viz. For free. Online. This is insane.

Of course, anything by Rumiko Takahashi is going to get the blockbuster treatment. What remains to be seen is what other stuff will follow in its footsteps. Just popular shounen works? Shoujo? Seinen? There are also lingering questions about online reading. Will they eventually put it behind a pay wall? Ultimately, some sort of online, subscription-based service seems likely. That sounds reasonable to me; however, kids who aren't getting a paycheck may not be so enthusiastic about the prospect.

Similar things have been happening with digital distribution on the anime side of the fence. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is probably the biggest thing to be streamed so far, and a surprising number of shows from the current season are also streaming from Funimation. Crunchyroll is expanding its roster of legal titles, and some of them don't suck, for once. 

As this trend continues, will fansubbing and scanlation face an existential crisis? To some extent the lines have already been drawn: there are the "drop when licensed" groups, and then the others. The latter will continue unless they receive legal threats, and the truly hardcore may even go underground. But for what? In this era, where licensors are sensitive to fan concerns about source fidelity and censorship, there are fewer and fewer reasons to go it alone. On the other hand, traditional (by that I mean those who drop when licensed) will face slimmer pickings as time goes on.

So, is a golden age coming to a close? In a sense, yes. But it's come about because fan-translation has fulfilled its promise of bringing anime and manga to the mainstream.