Category: manga
Akihabara – Welcome to Electric Town
Where do I start?
Shopping for Manga in Shinjuku
Just like all the stories you hear, manga is everywhere in Japan. There’s racks of it in every supermarket and convenience store you pass, and at lunch times gangs of salary-men and students gather around to silently read it.
Today we stumbled across Comic and DVD Forrest in Shinjuku, a specialist store with so much stock that, to be frank, it’s a bit of a mindfuck. Didn’t actually buy anything this time – they had a couple of Denno Coil art books, but not the exact one I’m looking for – but I did manage to grab a few shots before the super-polite staff busted me….
Manga is bad for your health
Actually, there’s nothing funny about this. Nothing at all.
Miyagi Prefectural Police officials in northeastern Japan have announced on Monday that they discovered a man dead in his apartment underneath several hundred manga volumes and magazines. They are investigating the cause of death and whether the 37-year-old male company employee is another casualty of last week’s earthquake in Miyagi.
From Anime News Network.
Speed Racer: Manga box set and website
To cash in coincide with the release of the Speed Racer live action flick, publishers DMP have released a beautiful looking hardcover box set of the original 1960s manga. That I want. Badly. In the meantime, I’ll just have to make do with staring at the almost as lovely looking website they’ve put up to promote it.
And no, I haven’t seen the movie yet. Hopefully this week…will keep you posted.
Everybody loves Ghost in the Shell
According to Variety today, Steven Speilberg’s Dreamworks studio has acquired the rights to produce a live action version of Ghost in the Shell. It’s not clear at this point whether the plan is to make an adaptation of Oshii’s 1995 movie, or Shirow’s 1989 manga, and the cynical among us (i.e. me) might jump to the conclusion that this is just a bandwagon jump after the announcement of the Akira live action flick. But apparently Spielberg ‘loves’ the original, and believes it is a ‘genre that has arrived’. Erm, OK Stevie. What genre, exactly? Cyberpunk? If so, then ‘fraid you’re jackin’ in about 20 years too late, chombatta.