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RIGHT TURN ONLY!! - Nekomancer


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here-and-faraway



Joined: 21 Jun 2007
Posts: 1528
Location: Sunny California
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 12:16 am Reply with quote
I'll have to check out BUTTERFLIES, FLOWERS. I'm bummed that Claymore is going downhill. I really like the series.

As always, great job on the column! Thanks!
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 2:48 am Reply with quote
The scene where Sora dissipates in the sea (not a spoiler; it's right there in the plot summary) really affected me. I had my doubts about Children of the Sea before then, but that scene hooked me. I bought the volume despite reading a library copy first. And now, I can't wait to see what's next!

I didn't really get what you liked about Neko Ramen. What are the jokes like? Could you compare it to any American or Japanese gag strips? It does not sound anything like Dilbert. Is it wacky-funny, snarky-funny, or punny-funny. Eh, it sounds kind of like Pearls before Swine (or that other strip about the single guy with the less than smart dog and the evil, sadistic cat--name escapes me right now), but I could be totally off...

Talking about being totally off, everytime I hear about a mangaka whose works were successful in the English market, but whose latest work, despte success in Japan, is still unlicensed (Natsuki Takaya, Chico Umino, even the older works of Ai Yazawa) I wonder if the manga industry is really going down. What's the holdup?
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utawoutau



Joined: 27 Feb 2004
Posts: 190
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:08 am Reply with quote
I've always wondered this, is there any particular reason that "Fairy Tale" looks exactly like "One Piece"?
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doctordoom85



Joined: 12 Jun 2008
Posts: 2091
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:12 am Reply with quote
Yeah, I've heard most people think Claymore really goes downhill not too long after where the anime cut off. Kind of makes me wonder if I should just stick with buying the anime. Also makes me wonder why people are so upset with Madhouse not doing a second season.....
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swanjun



Joined: 19 May 2006
Posts: 25
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:37 am Reply with quote
utawoutau wrote:
I've always wondered this, is there any particular reason that "Fairy Tale" looks exactly like "One Piece"?


I think the artist was an assistant of Eiichiro Oda's at one point in time.
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FeralKat



Joined: 06 Jan 2005
Posts: 402
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 10:49 am Reply with quote
Dispite the bad review, I really loved Portrait of M & N. I still find it an atypical shojo manga! Very Happy

Yuki Yoshihara is awesome. She's one the few mangaka that can make me laugh out loud. I hope that if Butterflies, Flowers sells well, VIZ will bring over her other series, too!
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braves



Joined: 29 Dec 2007
Posts: 2309
Location: Puerto Rico (but living in Texas)
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 11:06 am Reply with quote
swanjun wrote:
utawoutau wrote:
I've always wondered this, is there any particular reason that "Fairy Tale" looks exactly like "One Piece"?


I think the artist was an assistant of Eiichiro Oda's at one point in time.
Actually, the fact is that he was never anybody's assistant. So the only explanation left is obvious and the word starts with a "p".
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FeralKat



Joined: 06 Jan 2005
Posts: 402
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 11:17 am Reply with quote
braves wrote:
swanjun wrote:
utawoutau wrote:
I've always wondered this, is there any particular reason that "Fairy Tale" looks exactly like "One Piece"?


I think the artist was an assistant of Eiichiro Oda's at one point in time.
Actually, the fact is that he was never anybody's assistant. So the only explanation left is obvious and the word starts with a "p".

It's actually a real sore point for him. He was a guest at Comic Con and I remember talking to some of the staff helping him. He gets really irritated when fans ask him that. Guess what someone asked during a panel... Easy to say he wasn't happy.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 11:36 am Reply with quote
doctordoom85 wrote:
Yeah, I've heard most people think Claymore really goes downhill not too long after where the anime cut off. Kind of makes me wonder if I should just stick with buying the anime. Also makes me wonder why people are so upset with Madhouse not doing a second season.....

Especially since, if I look at chapter counts, I'm not sure there's enough for another 26-episodes season. Maybe a thirteen episode season... and it would be hard to reconcile the cliffhanger before the time-skip with the anime ending. Not that I think they should have kept the cliffhanger, mind you; it would have been a horrible downer ending unless you read ahead and discover spoiler[they only faked their deaths].

To me at least last volume's reveal seemed pretty much an ass-pull, if you'll pardon my language. Or maybe it was just the way it was revealed, with a long exposition speech on stuff a character found out off-panel. If Carl, whose manga tastes and mine align maybe 70-80% of the time, thinks it's going downhill from there, chances are I may as well. *crosses fingers that it will pick up again*

braves wrote:
So the only explanation left is obvious and the word starts with a "p".

I'm not sure whether mimicking a style really counts as plagiarism per se. Unless we're talking dead-on tracing, one can be stylistically reminiscent without plagiarizing. Imagine if this were a written work; so long as he wasn't lifting whole passages, and just had a similar style, it wouldn't be true plagiarism.

To me it indicates perhaps an immaturity as an artist. Urasawa Naoki's earliest work, Pineapple Army (an issue of which I recently found at a comic book store), is incredibly similar to Katsuhiro Otomo's. It really shows how Urasawa had no professional art training and learned to draw by patterning his work on other artists. Over time his style has become his own, though, and as a result this early work is rather embarrassing. Perhaps over time Mashima Hiro will also develop his own style and stop relying on another artist for inspiration. Admittedly he's ten years older than Urasawa was when he illustrated Pineapple Army and has written three different series with this same style, but still, there's a chance he'll come into his own...right?
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The Mad Manga Massacre



Joined: 15 Jul 2009
Posts: 1166
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 2:02 pm Reply with quote
Glad to see Children of the Sea receiving such a positive review. I hope Viz brings over some of Daisuke Igarashi's other works as he deserves all the exposure he can get. His only other work to be officially translated was in the Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators anthology (which I also intend to check out in the near future). To explain Children of the Sea would simply not do it justice, I know I seem to begoing on and on with praising it, however its just that good.
I had, honestly, no idea that Neko Ramen was being released in English. I've never read it before but I've read mixed reviews of it. Could be, at the very least, a change in pace from many of the recent 4-koma gag comdies revolving around a group of girls in a school setting (no offense to people who read these series however it would be nice to have some more variety in the 4 panel comedy area).
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 2:21 pm Reply with quote
braves wrote:
swanjun wrote:
utawoutau wrote:
I've always wondered this, is there any particular reason that "Fairy Tale" looks exactly like "One Piece"?


I think the artist was an assistant of Eiichiro Oda's at one point in time.
Actually, the fact is that he was never anybody's assistant. So the only explanation left is obvious and the word starts with a "p".


I've never really paid attention to it.
An artist's style is an artist's style. I probably started reading Rave Master before I started reading One Piece so it never really registered which was first & going over to Rave Master Shuda is more a Vegeta clone than anything else.

So MAYBE the similarity is both are heavily inspired by Toriyama.
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gartholamundi



Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 316
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 2:31 pm Reply with quote
you can get a complete sense of Neko Ramen from the Tokyopop site -- i signed up for a daily 4-panel of the noodle-making cat and i think i've received over 80 of them so far. there's also a link in the emails to the Neko Ramen site itself, which archives the panels. i don't find it to be hilarious-fall-down-the-stairs funny, but its cute enough for me to keep reading in this give-away version. i agree with Carlo that the cat's brazen in-your-face attitude goes a long way toward making the strip work. i actually like the sparse, newpaper-like drawing style in that it's a nice break from the hugely detailed Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service level of detail that i really love and keep coming back to manga to find.


EDIT: above i wasn't meaning to sound like people should or shouldn't buy the collected comic. i'm just pointing out that you can find out very easily if you really like it enough to put it on your shelf since a couple people here seemed to be wondering about it. i hope it does well for Tokyopop, and i hope some people do check it out and like it enough to invest in it. i've steered away from most of their titles (preferring Viz Ikki, Dark Horse, etc), but i'd hate to see another american manga producer bite the dust anytime soon. all the bad news over the past year has really sucked.
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maaya



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 976
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:55 pm Reply with quote
FeralKat wrote:

It's actually a real sore point for him. He was a guest at Comic Con and I remember talking to some of the staff helping him. He gets really irritated when fans ask him that. Guess what someone asked during a panel... Easy to say he wasn't happy.


Can't be helped if it looks that similar, he has to expect that question. I can somehow accept that they are both inspired by Akira Toriyama, but even if the style of two people is inspired by the same artist - they shouldn't look that similar. And RAVE didn't really look all that much like One Piece either.

However they really did exaggerate when doing the covers of Fairy Tail. These are really designed exactly the same way as the One Piece ones oO And if that isn't on purpose I really don't know.
Every time I see FT in a manga shop, at first I believe it's One Piece.

It might not be his choice entirely though. One Piece is incredibly successful and is being copied by many publishers. Some editor even told his artist "draw One Piece". Not even "draw something like One Piece".

I simply believe that both have been inspired by Akira Toriyama, and that Mashima also has been inspired (a lot) directly by Oda. And his publisher might be pushing him (I don't believe the mangaka designs the covers himself all alone).
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:50 pm Reply with quote
@gartholamundi: Thanks! I haven't been to Tokyopop's site in quite a while, so I had no idea that they were doing free previews. More power to them! Frankly, they dissapoint me the most out of all the manga publishers, (the quality of their books, both in how they publish and what they license, has been a letdown, and the Kodansha fiasco was awful, left a lot of good series [Beck, for example] in the dust. And when you figure in their OEL problems...)

well, let's just say I'm surprised they're still around. But they are still around, miraculously, and I really hope Hetalia brings them back in the black and up on that best seller chart.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:11 pm Reply with quote
With this whole deal about Fairy Tail looking like One Piece, I wonder if the current ever flowed the other way--if Eiichiro Oda has shown up at some convention somewhere and has been asked repeatedly if Hiro Mashima ever worked under him.

That he's forced to draw One Piece is quite plausible. It would explain why he'd get so angry at this question, and if true, would mean he's a WAY better artist than he makes himself to be: If he can copy One Piece this closely, he can copy anything.
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