Elegy for Apothecarius Argentum 8

I just finished volume 8, and I am in mourning.  Not just for character X, whose death has been bumming me out every time I think of it all day (poor character X!!!!), but for the fact that I will NEVER FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS. 

Seriously, I'm going to go cry some more about the demise of CMX, the company who published this fine series with its slightly amateurish art and its startling ability to casually go where no manga I've read has gone before.  Euthanasia, abortion, slavery, prostitution: is this really a shojo manga (nothing at all like Banana Fish)? 

And two characters finally got to walk a bit holding hands, and then political chaos breaks out!  And this totally unexpected cliffhanger with a zillion converging loose ends leaves you wanting more NOW, and you can't have it because you are a good, law-abiding citizen (seriously contemplating breaking copyright law to find out what happens because you can't buy what happens next).  A sad, aborted "ending" for another fine series that deserved a full run.

Go read it now before even what we have is out of print.  Oh, my poor character X!  This sucks for us all!

Pastor of the Nerds

Okay, this was just kind of awesome. I think I should be friends with this person.

"A Comic-Con Recap from a 'Pastor of the Nerds'"
Tony Kim tries to build bridges between fandom and the kingdom.

Basically, he's a Christian who's a comics fan, and he doesn't see any need to separate the two.  My kind of person.  :)

Selections from What I Read in September: Digest Version, Part 1 of 2

Ah, September.  When suddenly I remember why I hate the short warm time we call summer up here that starts in June and ends in August.  Well, that's not true.  It reminds me why I hate the cold time that runs from September through May.  This is a temperate zone, right?  I've got my manga and exercise to keep me warm.

• b Chi's Sweet Home 1-2:  Totally adorable.  Seriously.  Warm fuzzies and short laughs as you follow a cute kitten and the family that takes her into their pet free apartment and has to hide her.  Also found out where her cute name came from and nearly had a spasm.
• b Jihai 1: I have read people tearing this one to shreds as boring and lame.  I like it.  I really do.  Those end-of-book cliffhangers were great the first time through, and I didn't think knowing how they resolved hurt the reread value for me (since I sort of forgot most everything).  I liked all the various characters with their tortured pasts, too, and I liked the somewhat nonstandard ways they dealt with redemption and atonement. 
• b Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 9-10: I talked about these already.  Same acid dark humor.  Same fantastic notes at the end.  How to know if you'll be able to handle the horror within: Can you look closely at the cover and not throw up?
• b Maison Ikkoku 12: Just like with the real people bumbling around in romantic relationships in your life, you just want to shake these people sometimes, too.
• b Saturn Apartments 1: Totally great.  Seriously unusual.  Earnest, sweet, and sad.  The story of a future when Earth is uninhabitable, and everybody lives on a big ring around the earth.  Mainly follows the story of a young orphaned boy who chooses to be a window washer, a dangerous and sometimes thankless job (the job his father died doing).  Slice of life sci-fi.
• b Silver Diamond 3: Can the power of nice save the world?  Find out here.
• b A Tale of an Unknown Country 1-2: I'm pretty bummed there won't be more of this one.  It irked me a bit because it got my hopes up when it laid out a really serious, realistic sort of scenario in a broken relationship between brothers.  Then it shojo-powered through all the careful setup and tried to bulldoze on with the power of genki.  I shouldn't have let it get my hopes up, but situations like this particular one that break relationships between siblings are of interest to me, and I wanted to see how they dealt with it.  Now I'll never know if they redeem themselves by treating it seriously again.  Alas.
• b Tsubasa 27: I'll admit that I have no idea what that was all about.  I think some day when I marathon this series, it will make (more) sense.
• b Tuxedo Gin 1:  So he dies, but he gets to come back as a penguin, live out a penguin's natural lifespan, and then be returned to his body.  He picked a penguin for sentimental reasons.  I wouldn't picked the shortest living critter I knew about.  But that's because I'm not in love with someone who adores penguins.  Well, and there are other reasons such as reality . . .

 A lot of variety here this month.  Good month.

Dear Viz

Dear Viz,

I know it's unlikely, but could you please license the live action Bunny Drop?  You have a connection to it: the actor who played L in Deathnote (you licensed the live action movies of that) plays the main adult character in Bunny Drop.  If that does well for you, could you also license the live action Detroit Metal City?  Yeah, I know they're pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum, but that guy is one heck of an actor, and I'd like to legally see him in more roles.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
The Moon in Autumn

My comments on a top 10 best of the decade list

In honor of Anime Nation's Ask John's picks for best TV anime of the decade, here are some of my thoughts on his picks.

• 2001's Chikyu Shoujo Arjuna (Earth Girl Arjuna): Yeah, I really liked this one.  John didn't mention its absolutely stunning music or the excellent English dub, but those are really the things he's most looking for.  ST got a bit hung up by the ecological  bludgeoning here, but she did like the music and the VA work, too.
• 2001′s Noir: I got a big kick out of this one too.  I didn't mind the slow burn plotting, and I enjoyed all the things he mentioned.  ST liked this one a lot, too.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: while it sometimes skirted the edge of what I could tolerate in terms of violence, this show was really excellent.  And ST agrees!
• 2004′s Mousou Dairinin (Paranoia Agent):  was it the ending theme song of this one that was just utterly ridiculous, or was it the opening theme song? I think this may be the only CD soundtrack I ever bought just to get a hold of a single song. I found the show creepy as all get out, and it was confusing and messed with my head and made watching and appreciating Millennium Actress and Paprika possible.
• 2005′s Mushishi: Just gorgeous.  I remember being hesitant when I heard it was an anime because the manga was just so stunning, but the anime was equally incredible.
• 2005′s Honey & Clover: Oh, so this is a romantic comedy. I was having the hardest time trying to figure out what genre it was.  If you ever wanted a good sampler of melodic, wistful, not annoying Japanese pop, the soundtrack would fit the bill perfectly.
• 2007′s Denno Coil: Not available in our region.  This means I should not have seen it, but my anime club watched it, and I totally adored it. I would buy it in a heartbeat if someone would license it, but somehow I don't think the combination of Miyazaki meets Ghost in the Shell is ever really going to fly in the US.  That's a huge pity because, oh my goodness, this show was awesome.
• 2007′s Seirei no Moribito: I am planning to watch this at some point over the next week while my students are experiencing fall break. However, realistically, I think I'm going to be grading most of the time. Now I'll have to decide if I want to do a Moribito marathon or a huge book binge.  I'm in agony here, folks. 
• 2007′s Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: I am getting a huge kick out of this show.  (I'm actually watching it now at a rate of one episode a week via Netflix.) It is so fun, just as fun as Melody of Oblivion without the added, repugnant perversity.  (I still can't believe John said that was one of his favorite underloved series in an earlier post.  It had its moments of brilliance, in my opinion, but then it would go and do something pointlessly fanboy, and the girls being milked like cows almost made me stop watching a couple episodes from the end. Yuck.)  Anyway, Gurren Lagann: way too fun.
• 2008′s Kaiba: Not available in our region.  Also, our anime club isn't that experimental, so even though people have suggested it, no one has taken them up on it and voted the show in.  Yet.

 I have to say that I am very impressed by how many of these have actually been released in the United States.I would've expected fewer of them to actually be legally available.Way to go, anime licensing companies!  (Whoever picks up the license for Denno Coil, I'll be your best friend forever!)

Selections from What I Read in August: Digest Version, Part 2 of 2

More good stuff from August. Some last books in a series, some new series coming out sooooo slooooooowly . . .

• b Natsume's Book of Friends 1: Still magical and melancholy with just the right tone and distance.  Beautiful.
• b Neon Genesis Evangelion 11: Oh, dear.  You know, that scene just couldn't really be replicated to have as much power in the manga, which is unfortunate, but Sadamoto gets around that by coming at things from a different angle so that the same conclusion means something very different.  What a sneaky man.  If only he could be inspired faster.
• b NG Life 3: Oh, I do love this story.  It's hilarious and thought-provoking and touching and has great re-read value. 
• b One Thousand and One Nights 11:  That ending was perfect.  Just perfect.  The stories within a story theme carried out to a somewhat hilarious and jarring conclusion.  Can I call it meta?
• b Ooku 4: Oh.  Oh, gosh.  Wow.  Just sad.  Has that air of inevitability, but you're kicking and screaming the whole way.  You want to believe they could have found happiness somehow, but sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them to.  It's devastating.
• b Otomen 7: The end of the music story was too snort-worthily hilarious.  And that last story.  Oh, that was so sad and sweet!  Dude, I thought of several ways to make it work out better, but I didn't care.
• b Ouran 14: Awkward!  Awesome!
• b Slam Dunk! 5-6: Dude, doesn't anyone ever think, "Hey, I should call the police who will come to our school and see that a biker gang of vicious thugs has illegally entered our property and is wailing on our basketball team, and NO WAY is anyone on our team going to get in trouble for fighting off the attackers?  Just asking.
• b Spiral 12:   Now that we might know who the Blade Children are (a journey we started how many years ago when Funimation licensed the TV series that failed to answer the question), things are so much worse.  It's great.  I love the veiled POV that means you know nobody's telling the whole truth, but you don't know who's telling what parts.  And those moral dilemmas!  Seriously!  Now I find out there's a sequel?!  Here I was thinking there'd be some resolution at the end of this one, and now I don't know.  I love the messed up places this series has twisted its way into.
• b Train*Train 1:  You know what?  The prairie dog was just as stupid/funny this time around. 
• b Whistle! 23-24: No way!!  That sucked.  It was perfect.  I am miffed about the "unexplained/unnamed injury for plot purposes" thing I always see in manga (though it was definitely earned in this case).  I want to know what it is, so I can know if it's really possible.  If it was just a blown ACL or something, it's not worth all the drama, but manga never seems to actually name the injury/disease/whatever.  I was thrilled when Flower of Life used a real diagnosis and actually seemed to deal with (some) of the real symptoms and fallout, but even that had some shady medicine.  Then again, maybe folks in Japan aren't as familiar with it as I am, so they don't want/need/wish to know.  Anyway, that was some really great shonen action, folks, right up to the bitter end.  Excellent series.  Next time the World Cup comes around, I know what I'm reading to psych myself up for it, and it ain't How Soccer Explains the World.

There were a decent number of re-reads that month, due to a conspiracy at the used book stores in my area.  :)

Selections from What I Read in August: Digest Version, Part 1 of 2

Yeah, August. I know you've been waiting with baited breath and all. Sorry. Ah, the joy of catching up because you're waiting for your linens to dry, so you can make your bed and fall into it.

• b Dazzle 7: You never know when this one is actually giving you the whole story via flashback (you're pretty sure it's not, but then it seems like it is, but it's not . . .). It's still kind of a glorious mess.
• b Fullmetal Alchemist 23: Oh, Roy. Oh, Roy. And Risa. Wow. Does anyone know if Brotherhood actually goes to the real end of the series? If so, I can't watch it until I've finished the manga. If you like FMA, read the manga!
• b GALS! 8-10: I dragged my feet so much on finishing this one because I didn't want it to be over!! Oh, the melodrama; oh, the humanity!  Fare thee well, my GAL pals. Next time I need a dose of hyper, I know who to call. (And finally, big bro and Miyu.)
• b Gente 1: Ah, so relaxing. A mixed bag of stories revolving around the waiters of Ristorante Paradiso. Same sketchy Ono artwork and tons of atmosphere.  Quite lovely.
• b Hayate the Combat Butler 10-13: More of the same random, goofy fun. The difference is, we're getting to the allusions I recognize firsthand now, and they do make things funnier.
• b Hikaru no Go 20: The shonen goodness keeps coming.  Things changed directions a bit, but I'm still having fun, though I do miss Sai a lot sometimes.
• b Kaze Hikaru 18: Oh, I love this series. I am afraid of how it will end, considering how history did end. I don't think I could bear to read these characters all the way to their unhappy endings. But the tension that known ending provides is undeniably necessary for the series to function as it does. It's just so great!
• b Kekkaishi 22: Oh, dear. Complications and maturing and really scary psycho bad guys. Oh my. I love the air of menace it builds up and then blows up and the unexpected turns it takes. I love the characters, the plot, the action, the intrigue, the shonen-adrenaline rush, the whole shebang.
• b Library Wars 2:  I love this series. Awww. So funny and so sweet. Good action/tension going for it, too, sometimes.

So maybe I didn't quite manage to get sunburned, as was my goal during a weekend in October where there was no rain, and the temps exceeded 80, but I did get to read part of Kieli 3 outside in the sun. Your promptness is appreciated, Yen Press, oh, so appreciated.