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Homecoming, Nana volumes 1-3

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I’ve returned home from a very productive trip to North Carolina. The auditions were exhausting, but i’ve got a day to recover at home before returning to work, which is nice. I downloaded the new iTunes last night, and now I’m listening to a “genius”-made playlist, which is surprisingly pretty good!

I never did find a local shop for manga in Charlotte, but as it turns out, there really wasn’t much time for anything like that, anyway. I did take a restaurant recommendation from a reader on the LiveJournal-mirror, who sent us to Macado’s in Concord for the macaroni and cheese, and I have to say it was delicious!

So, as I mentioned, I picked up the first three volumes of Nana for the trip. I’d like to talk a bit more about them now.

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Greetings from Charlotte!

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It’s a beautiful, sunny morning in Charlotte, though I’m still enjoying it through the window of my hotel room, as I lazily prepare for our first day of auditions here. I’ll just be watching our callbacks all day, so I don’t have to rush around to get to the general auditions when they start this morning. I suppose I’ve achieved something when I get to hire other people to do all the rushing around.

Charlotte is really a lovely city, though I admit I’ve only seen about three blocks worth of it so far. After arriving yesterday, our assistant production manager and I walked over to the theater where they were doing registrations, and there was an Indian cultural festival of some kind going on in the street. Multiple booths with delicious, spicy-smelling food, and lots of women walking around in colorful saris, it was really a nice welcome to the city.

For anyone who might be wondering, I ended up not taking any of the advice I was given on what manga to bring on the plane, though I did try. Our local bookstores and the comic shop were unhelpful in my search for volume 1 of Dororo (though I could get volumes 2 & 3 at one Barnes & Noble), which was what I’d most strongly considered. I’m happy with my choice, though. I ended up getting the first three volumes of Nana (which I’ve meant to read for a long time, finally cemented by Johanna Draper Carlson’s recent review of volume 9), and wow, what a charming series! Now of course I’m wishing I’d bought more of it, but the volumes I had effectively dulled the horror of my two flights yesterday, so I’m very grateful to them.

Time to start rallying myself to the day’s cause. More later, perhaps. In conclusion: Banana Fish. :D

Making the case for Banana Fish

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One of the series I’m always trying to draw friends into is Akimi Yoshida’s classic shojo manga, Banana Fish. I first discovered this series, embarrassingly, through wikipedia, as I was trying to find shojo manga that I could really enjoy. It was this entry that piqued my interested in the series, citing a quote from Frederik L. Schodt, which described Banana Fish as “…one of the few girls’ manga a red-blooded Japanese male adult could admit to reading without blushing.” Right around the same time, mention of Banana Fish began turning up in interviews with Jason Thompson, just before the publication of his book, Manga: The Complete Guide, and though I don’t remember exactly what he said about it back then, it had the effect of spurring my interest into action, and before I knew it, I began buying the series.

I’m certainly not the only person who has tried to generate interest in Banana Fish. Shaenon Garrity made it part of her awesome Overlooked Manga Festival (one of my very favorites of that series so far), and to my mind, no further persuasion should be needed. Still, I find Banana Fish is a tough sell with friends. There’s no way to effectively preview the series, as it is difficult to find in libraries or brick and mortar bookstores. There are not even fan scanlations available to view. Anyone who wants to jump into this series pretty much has to commit to buying at least one book they may not end up liking, and I’ve found just a few who are willing to risk that. I’m going to try here to build on the case that Shaenon Garrity has already made for this series, with hope that even just one more person might choose to take that risk.

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Travel & manga: Two great tastes that taste great together

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This post is a bit of a mish-mash, which probably reflects the state of my brain after the long weekend. At the moment, I’m thinking a lot about travel. This coming weekend, I’ll be heading to Charlotte, NC to attend the Southeastern Theater Conference auditions on behalf of the children’s theater company I work for. We have quite a few actors to cast for tours starting in January, very serious business, and yet my mind is currently focused on two things:

1) What manga should I bring on the plane?
2) Where does one buy manga in Charlotte, NC?

If you know the answers to these burning questions, please do let me know. Also, I’ve finally purchased my ticket for the New York Anime Festival, so there will be quite a bit of travel for me this month. Thankfully, that is a much easier trip, which also allows me to see old friends in the city, and I certainly won’t have any trouble figuring out where to buy manga. ;)

Speaking of manga, as I’ve mentioned somewhere around here, I’ve been subsisting lately off of what can be found on my local comic shop’s used shelf. They rarely happen to have whatever volume I need next of the many series I’m collecting, so I’ve been reading the first volume in a lot of series. A couple of the series I’ve started recently because of this are Million Tears (which is only two volumes, total) and Zig Zag, both of which I’ll talk about a bit here.

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How I got into comics, or why there is hope for Bob Thompson

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Yesterday, Brigid Alverson linked to an article by Bob Thompson at the Washington Post, in which he discussed the recent popularity of graphic novels, and his experiences sampling them as a steadfast “prose guy.” I link to Brigid’s post here, because her reaction to the article was much like mine (and a million other manga fans across the internet, including John Jakala, whose post on the subject she also linked to, and who spoke about it in thoughtful detail), which was something like politely irritated disbelief at the fact that he seemed to pass hasty judgement on manga as a whole based on one volume of Naruto and seemingly little else. This is especially interesting, given that he does recognize late in the article that, “in the world of Japanese comics, you can do anything you want.”

Nobody needs me to reiterate the article, and pretty much everything that could be said about it already has been, and by people much more eloquent and knowledgeable than I. If I have anything to offer here, it is my own story of learning to love manga, because really, if I could fall in love with it, anyone could, even Bob Thompson.

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Bakuman ch. 2, yikes.

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Well, a friend warned about the sexism in chapter 2 of Bakuman, but I didn’t realize how strong it was until I saw it for myself today. I’ll keep reading the series, and I’ll buy the books when they come out, because I’m a Takeshi Obata fangirl and there’s nothing to be done about it. But, wow.

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Quack!

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The day has continued very nicely, and I’m settled in for the evening now, pets snuggled up around me. I realized a few minutes ago that I have the “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker in my head, and then I realized why. Hee. Lately, we’ve been watching an anime series from, I think, 2002 called Princess Tutu. I love Princess Tutu. I feel quite foolish saying those words, “I love Princess Tutu,” but that is really the truth. This series manages to be ridiculous, pretty, profound, whimsical, and tragic all at once. Oh, and there’s a duck. I really love the duck.

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Why you should read xxxHolic

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Once upon a time in my secret fannish life, sad and frustrated with the small size of the xxxHolic fandom, I created a so-called “persuasion post.” Its purpose was to inspire friends to begin reading the series, write lots of fanfiction, and join in on all my xxxHolic glee. I think, however, that this post deserves better than being hidden behind a fannish identity, so I have unearthed it from the clutter and reworked it for a broader audience. Behold, the new (de-fandomed) xxxHolic Persuasion Post:

Let your wishes be granted.

First of all, this post is specifically about the manga. The anime is nice enough in its way, but it can’t even begin to compare to the manga and I think it is better to watch it if you’ve already read the manga, so that you can fill in the blanks with your own mind.

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This is a box. A magical box, playing a magical tune.

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I saw this headline in the geeks group at Propeller, and it blew my mind for a few minutes.

Gene Hunt Hints at Cause of Bipolar Disorder

If you’re not a Life on Mars fan, that probably means nothing, but if you are, you may be able to imagine the several minutes I spent trying to figure out how Gene Hunt was involved with Bipolar Disorder. Heh.

Links! Johanna Draper Carlson reviews Kasumi vol. 1 at comicsworthreading. Now, you may remember back when I was lamenting on shojo manga (yes, this was before I lamented on boys’ love), I mentioned this comic as one that I’d looked forward to until I saw its official write-up. The review brings me back a little more toward hope. It still sounds fluffier than my original expectations, but maybe there’s a little substance after all? Or at least some genuine whimsy? I hope so! I’ll try to pick this up soon.

Rambling about OEL manga to follow: …

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Random, happy, confusing, exciting

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First of all, many thanks to those who have been leaving BL recommendations for me here! I’ve started looking a bit at some of the recs, and will report back in more detail soon. So far, the series I’ve looked at are Shout out Loud!, Let Dai, and Totally Captivated, and I’ve liked at least *something* about each of them, though I still have some reservations.

Random: This made me laugh for an entire day. Seriously.

Happy: I have at last acquired a scanner, which means that my next installment of the Fullmetal Alchemist Read-a-Long will include scanned pages from the Viz editions, rather than scanlations which I’d resorted to originally. I’ve also updated the previous entries (vol. 1 & 2 | vol. 3 & 4) with the proper pages. I’m also thinking of posting some version of my massive xxxHolic post in this blog (previously posted in fannish places), now that I have proper scanned pages, as I have a pretty much constant urge to try to draw people into that series.

A bit of navel-gazing to follow: …

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Links, links, & Wish volume 1

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First off, a few interesting links from the non-manga portion of my blogroll (yes, I do care about things other than manga):

Wil Wheaton says we should try to stop MTV from remaking The Rocky Horror Picture Show. W. T. F? I agree. Sign the petition here. AmyM has posted a list of writing contests of many kinds. Very cool, and also a strong reminder that none of us have an excuse to be sitting on our asses. Neil Gaiman is not blogging but links to the Coraline promo video-a-day. Coraline is one of my favorite books, and though I’ve been a little suspicious of the way it’s being put on the screen, I remain cautiously optimistic.

Okay, this is actually from my LJ friends-list (and *is* about manga), but ashura-sama has posted her translation of this week’s xxxHolic spoilers, and I admit I’m a bit giddy. Her cut tag jokes that “-This- should be chapter 104” and okay, yes, I ‘ship Doumeki/Watanuki, what can I say? Note: Link contains spoilers for xxxHolic chapter 163. Click at your own risk.

On other CLAMP-related subjects, I am still catching up on older series, and finally picked up volume 1 of Wish from the used shelf at my local comic shop (Modern Myths, by the way, a lovely store indeed*), and read it last evening. …

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Doctor Who, Bakuman ch. 1, xxxHolic vol. 12 (again)

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I had a busy weekend, spending some with an old family friend and her teenaged daughter (a toddler the last I’d seen her!) who arrived in town Friday, and then attending last night’s installment of “Hooked on Who” at the Brattle theater in Cambridge (quite a hike from here, but so much fun). We watched Douglas Adams’ Pirate Planet arc along with a theater full of like-minded fans, well worth the drive. Before the event began, there was a rousing introduction that included a rundown of some of the theater’s upcoming events (including a screening of “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” which is such a lovely film). The whole thing made us wish that our local independent theaters (in Northampton and Amherst) would host these kinds of things.

In manga news, the first chapter of the new manga, Bakuman, by Death Note‘s Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata is out, and it’s definitely got me interested. …

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My thoughts on yaoi (no, really)

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As I was toodling around in Lissa Pattillo’s post-birthday/station-identification post this morning, I found myself mulling (once I’d finished groaning about my own old age) over my many issues with boys’ love manga. I have a fairly long history in slash fanfiction, and while a lot of it is really not to my taste (I prefer thoughtful, characterization-rich stories that reveal something new about the characters, as opposed to gratuitous smut-fests or sugary wish-fulfillment romances, and I’ll admit that the last two of these make up at least 75% of all relationship-focused fanfiction), it is easy to find the stuff I do like, now that I know how. So when I started really getting into manga, I thought boys’ love was going to be a no-brainer for me. Delving into the genre, though, I’ve been disappointed again and again, to the point where I’ve pretty much given up on it. I’m hoping Lissa’s blog will help me discover some series I enjoy, but I’m not as optimistic as I’d like. After all, even Jason Thompson let me down here. But I’m hoping that, as with fanfiction, it might be easy for me to find what I’m looking for, once I know how.

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Apologies, thanks, and a little bit of manga

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First of all, I should apologize to whoever was trying to leave a comment yesterday using Open ID. I have now discovered that the WordPress plugin for Open ID I installed is extremely broken. For now, I’ve just deactivated it, but I do hope to get it working eventually, so people can use that here. I am so sorry for the trouble. I know how irritating it can be to take the time to write up a comment, only to have it disappear into the ether.

To others who may be stopping by due to hits on their site meters: Um, hi. I’ve been adding some folks to my blogroll as I find things that interest me enough to be daily reads. Just trying to clear up the mystery, if there is any. :)

So, I’m know I’m late to the party (as always), but I finally started reading Tokyo Babylon recently, …

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