Big (Screened) in Japan

While here in Japan we're often forced to wait an absolute eternity for blockbuster movies from abroad to hit the screens — just as an example Star Trek Into Darkness doesn't arrive until 23 August, making this the last country listed on imdb.com to screen the sequel, three months after even Iceland — there are some home-baked goodies to keep us entertained.

It helps, of course, if you're into anime and manga, which I most certainly am, and 2013 is bubbling with big-screen versions of some titles you may've heard of before.
 
For starters there's something out later this month (July) courtesy of the great Katsuhiro Otomo, the genius behind both the Akira (1989) movie and manga, and one of my favourite Japanese comic book short-story books in English: Memories.

If you've never picked up this weighty tome, you should, since it's a 250-page compendium of shortstories veer wildly from surprising twists verging on Twilight Zone to silly slapstick, but it’s the title-tale ‘Memories’ that always grabs me.

A space salvage vessel with a cranky crew finds a drifting Marie Céleste with plush carpets, chandeliers, empty books and homicidal robot watchdogs — not to mention a mummified cadaver reaching out from beyond the grave.

With his new film Short Peace, Otomo has negotiated with Shuhei Morita, Hiroaki Ando, Hajime Katoki and Kōji Morimoto to produce a four-part short story omnibus, apparently based at least partially on Otomo's 1979 manga of the same name.


READ MORE @ FORCES OF GEEK

Two New Books Now Available

Quick update, since I’m over-excited as always when these things happen—my next two books are available (early) to order through Amazon.

Yep, I'm being greedy/self-indulgent (tick applicable) and publishing two of 'em.

The Condimental Op collection, officially out in July, is already in the hands of some of my mates if not yet my own, and Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?—due out in September—is now available for pre-order.

Just click on either novel’s moniker to go to the associated Amazon page. Both even have heavy discounts for any aspiring early birds.

And I’ll love you to death as a bonus.

What have either got to do with Japan? Well, Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? has very little—aside from lead character Pretty Amazonia (pictured here, conjured up by artist Juan Saavedra), who's a hybrid of super-powered girls' anime characters from things like Sailor Moon and PreCure. She even spends time reading a manga volume of Candy Candy.

And she gets around in a ship named the Magnetic Rose (check out Katsuhiro Otomo's 1995 anime Memories).


And there's a cameo by another character that plays on the Fuchikoma 1-man tanks used by members of Section 9 in Ghost in the Shell.

Otherwise, this is a novel paying equal homage to 1930s/40s noir by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett as it does to sci-fi/pulp and the silver age 1960s Marvel comic books by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Jim Steranko, Roy Thomas, Barry (Windsor) Smith, John Buscema, and their ilk.
 
Set in Melbourne.

The Condimental Op is a collection of noir, surreal stories, comicbook asides, hardboiled moments, fantasy, dystopia, sci-fi, snapshots of Japanese culture, and the existentialism of contemporary experimental electronic music—bringing together recent short stories, older material, new comic book art, and a range of pop-culture articles written about music and Japan from 1999 to 2013. 

Included are articles on bon odori, saké and fugu, along with reviews of Japanese flicks by Satoshi Kon and 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano.

Plus there's a minor spotlight on the joys of working on English subtitles for a feature by Mamoru Oshii.

The cover art is actually by my 7-year-old daughter Cocoa, and I love what she did here.

BTW, hats off to my awesomely indulgent publishers, Perfect Edge Books, and to all and everybody who’s read (or bothers to read) either tome mentioned here.

International Artists Yack About Japanese Anime

In last month's Flash In Japan we set the stage by asking a few upcoming international artists to tell us their thoughts on Japan—from manga through to the country's culture—and you can read Part 1 here.

These people are all young, pushing the perimetres of comic book and sequential art along with visual stills, and they're ones I worked with closely in the development of an upcoming noir/comicbook novel, Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?, out later this year through Perfect Edge Books.

So, for the merry month of May we're continuing our insightful yack, this time focusing on that bastion of global fascination: anime.

"Japanese animation is always years before any other country, and of course I absolutely love it," says Spanish artist Carlos Gomez.   "Overall? I think the best animation is seen in movies—like Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira."

"I don’t think an '80s child in the West didn’t get exposed to anime in one form or another," agrees Gomez's Australian peer Paul Mason.

"I recall Astro Boy and Voltron being my favorites as a kid—though I can’t say anime really influences my work directly in themes, I enjoy the Japanese flair in terms of the animation frame rates: The fast action speeds create such a high impact, plus I’ve always admired the camera selection choices and framing methods utilised in some of the better anime action films. The Warner Bros West/East animation co-production Batman: Gotham Knight had some fantastic example of this, and the storytelling approaches that the Japanese directors used, and the illustration/compositional choices within the segments, really hooked me. I think the marriage of Batman’s mythology and persona, with the Japanese flavour, really suits the ronin/samurai tradition, thinking and visuals of the character."

Spaniard Javier 'JG' Miranda (see Bullet Gal picture at right, from Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?) isn't quite so enamoured—not really. "I don't usually watch anime, mainly because I think the animation in the widespread series—such as Naruto, Bleach, even Dragon Ball—is a bit lacking due to the huge amount of work that a single episode needs, and the scarce time they have to prepare it. However, when talking about Studio Ghibli or some OVAs, you see the amazing quality these studios can achieve. That said, I have been a real fanatic of Dragon Ball, Dominion Tank Police, Slayers, Rurouni Kenshin..."


READ MORE @ FORCES OF GEEK.