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Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Spriggan


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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2532
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 8:40 am Reply with quote
I remember watching the movie, which I liked. Never read the manga, though. If either the movie or the manga got a re-release, or both, preferably, I probably buy them both. Even if the adventures follow similar plot patterns, when it comes to something like Spriggan it's more about the adventure itself (i.e. the "what") rather than the "why" or "how".
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Snomaster1
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Joined: 31 Aug 2011
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 2:34 pm Reply with quote
Mr. Thompson seems to wonder why "Spriggan" wasn't more successful here. Gee,I wonder why? Could it be because it has one of the most negative portrayals of this country that has ever been imported here? Both the manga and anime in effect,bashed this country. There was no attempt at balance. The message of "Spriggan" seemed to be that America is an evil country,end of story.
Sound like a story Usama Bin Laden might have liked. Even worse,the manga tried to make a good Adolf Hitler. WHAT in the heck were these people thinking? One of the most depraved leaders of all time a good guy? These people were out of their minds when they created this. I can see why "Spriggan" didn't do well here and Viz was right to drop this like a hot potato.
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FaytLein



Joined: 21 Jun 2008
Posts: 1260
Location: Williamsburg, VA
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 3:23 pm Reply with quote
Snomaster1 wrote:
Mr. Thompson seems to wonder why "Spriggan" wasn't more successful here. Gee,I wonder why? Could it be because it has one of the most negative portrayals of this country that has ever been imported here? Both the manga and anime in effect,bashed this country. There was no attempt at balance. The message of "Spriggan" seemed to be that America is an evil country,end of story.
Sound like a story Usama Bin Laden might have liked. Even worse,the manga tried to make a good Adolf Hitler. WHAT in the heck were these people thinking? One of the most depraved leaders of all time a good guy? These people were out of their minds when they created this. I can see why "Spriggan" didn't do well here and Viz was right to drop this like a hot potato.


I thought American's were portrayed in one of two ways, curvaceous females and hyper-militaristic nutjobs. There are probably worse series in this regard, and as Jason mentioned ARCAM goes up against EVERYBODY, not just the US of A.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:02 pm Reply with quote
Snomaster:
Quote:
Could it be because it has one of the most negative portrayals of this country that has ever been imported here? Both the manga and anime in effect,bashed this country. There was no attempt at balance.


There are plenty of home-made military action stories which attack America policies. For example, Rambo. Spriggan more likely did badly here because "Striker" didn't stand out well from anything most American comics were using as titles. Plus, by the time it came out here, the whole "teen super agent" angle seemed like a relic of the Red Dawn era of movie-making.
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MarkBoggling



Joined: 22 Sep 2011
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:46 pm Reply with quote
Spriggan is actually available entirely in english. The lovely folks at Chuang Yi have the license to both Spriggan and The Guyver if anyone is interested. The translation isn't perfect but it's very readable. Very Happy
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fuuma_monou



Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 1816
Location: Quezon City, Philippines
PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 12:52 am Reply with quote
MarkBoggling wrote:
Spriggan is actually available entirely in english. The lovely folks at Chuang Yi have the license to both Spriggan and The Guyver if anyone is interested. The translation isn't perfect but it's very readable. Very Happy


Problem is that Chuang Yi editions are supposed to be restricted to Singapore by the license, though I do see some CY-translated manga locally.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 2:10 am Reply with quote
Actually, I'm surprised Spriggan hasn't been optioned for an H'Wood movie by now.
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 12:48 pm Reply with quote
Snomaster1 wrote:
Mr. Thompson seems to wonder why "Spriggan" wasn't more successful here. Gee,I wonder why? Could it be because it has one of the most negative portrayals of this country that has ever been imported here? Both the manga and anime in effect,bashed this country. There was no attempt at balance. The message of "Spriggan" seemed to be that America is an evil country,end of story.
Sound like a story Usama Bin Laden might have liked. Even worse,the manga tried to make a good Adolf Hitler. WHAT in the heck were these people thinking? One of the most depraved leaders of all time a good guy? These people were out of their minds when they created this. I can see why "Spriggan" didn't do well here and Viz was right to drop this like a hot potato.


I don't think Spriggan is really that much more anti-American than a lot of action manga. Even in the Akira manga (not the anime), it's the American general who gives the order to blast all of Neo-Tokyo with the widened laser beam and destroy the entire city to kill Tetsuo and Akira. Images of Americans (specifically the American military) as belligerent jerks aren't that uncommon in manga. And as another poster pointed out, the Soviet Union and most other big countries also come off as bad guys.

On the other hand, one Viz editor who worked on the Hitler storyline (it wasn't me, I didn't work on Spriggan) was a bit offended by the ahistorical, revisionist, stupid take on Hitler. She got over it by basically treating it as pulp, like the whole storyline was a big joke; I think some of the dialogue in the English rewrite might be "turned up to 11" for this reason. She also pointed out that the dumbest thing in the Hitler arc (SPOILER) was the scene where the girl archaeologist DOESN'T RECOGNIZE HITLER even though he's walking around in a full-fledge Nazi uniform and his trademark haircut and 'stache. -_-
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 5:44 pm Reply with quote
ptolemy: I wasn't offended, because it was stupid, though it still essentially portrays him as a looney. Nonetheless, I'm wondering why Viz chose to bring over that chapter in the first place.
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enoah ballard



Joined: 15 Mar 2008
Posts: 22
PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 9:37 am Reply with quote
Does the manga feature any more of the bad guy from the movie? In the movie spoiler[ in the movie Colonel Douglas or whatever his name was never actually killed but instead jumps into a portal cackling "This isn't over , Spriggan!!" or something similar, which though it sounds corny and hackneyed written down actually came off as respectably badass considering Colonel Douglas inhabited te body of a sickly , 12 year old child several months away from death who had a few moments ago been stabbed in the chest by Yu's huge combat knife, ] so I've always wondered if he makes another badas appearance later in the manga. Though hearing that the manga is so episodic makes that seem less likely.

I've respected Ryoji Minagawa for a while now because he seems like one of the few authors that tries to write shounen action manga that aren't generally about the characters weilding some kind of magic , but instead take place in a military sci-fi framework. Okay, he does often have psychics and maybe a bit of chi, but compared to either nearly every character having super powers and reiatsu/chakra/yomi/nen, etc. levels, the more grounded, scifi action is refreshing. I hope there might be a bit of a resurgence in shounen action manga with a similar, secular approach.

I guess Minagawa's still working on his western seinen manga Peacemaker while the writer's doing Until Death Do Us Part, is he not? I suppose their stories are more suited to seinen magazines or fringe-shounen magazines like Champion Red in the current climate.
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 12:48 am Reply with quote
GATSU wrote:
ptolemy: I wasn't offended, because it was stupid, though it still essentially portrays him as a looney. Nonetheless, I'm wondering why Viz chose to bring over that chapter in the first place.


Well, I think Viz chose that storyline (skipping over several chapters inbetween the two Nazi chapters) because they thought Nazis were cool villains. I don't think they were fully aware when they made the license request that Hitler wasn't technically the villain of the piece. -_-
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Yu Ominae



Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 5:04 pm Reply with quote
Never thought that Spriggan would be featured. A big thank you to J.T. for doing this. And I see some questions/comments that deserved to be answered. I'll try my best since I've seen the entire manga in complete English with the republished Japanese version.

Though it's a minor issue, the mention of MJ-12 in the VIZ version of Spriggan never appeared in the Chuang Yi English translation, nor in the Japanese version. I'll assume it's the same for the European translations, including Korean.

Snomaster1 wrote:
Mr. Thompson seems to wonder why "Spriggan" wasn't more successful here. Gee,I wonder why? Could it be because it has one of the most negative portrayals of this country that has ever been imported here? Both the manga and anime in effect,bashed this country. There was no attempt at balance. The message of "Spriggan" seemed to be that America is an evil country,end of story.
Sound like a story Usama Bin Laden might have liked. Even worse,the manga tried to make a good Adolf Hitler. WHAT in the heck were these people thinking? One of the most depraved leaders of all time a good guy? These people were out of their minds when they created this. I can see why "Spriggan" didn't do well here and Viz was right to drop this like a hot potato.


Try to take into consideration that Spriggan's first manga chapter took place in the Cold War all the way to the mid 90s. During that period, America and the West were not sometimes held in high regard. Others have mentioned that the US Military spoiler[and the child soldier black ops unit COSMOS] with the CIA are not the only bad guys as the Soviet/British armies take on the Spriggans with other enemies such as the weapons merchant group named Trident, criminals, the Japanese government in one chapter, an ancient computer AI virus, spoiler[ a Jewish magician who wants to destroy the human race for his experiences in WWII and in the later parts of the manga, corrupt ARCAM officials working with Trident.]

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Quote:

Problem is that Chuang Yi editions are supposed to be restricted to Singapore by the license, though I do see some CY-translated manga locally.


True that, but you can order the stuff from them. I'm doing that soon for Black Lagoon.

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Quote:
Does the manga feature any more of the bad guy from the movie?


spoiler[No he dies in the end. ]

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Quote:

I guess Minagawa's still working on his western seinen manga Peacemaker while the writer's doing Until Death Do Us Part, is he not?


Yes. In addition, Minagawa did also ADAMAS and previously, D-Live! that also had a teenage protagonist. Except that he's a Macgvyer with vehicles.

Takashige's doing UDDUP with a Korean manhwa artist named DOUBLE-S (Which is an alias of SONG Ji-Hyoung).
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 5:22 pm Reply with quote
ptolemy: Now that I think about it, Indy 4 didn't just use the Crystal Skull idea in Spriggan, but the whole "aliens built the place" theme and the "competing with the Soviets" angle, as well. Personally, I'd rather Lucas went with the Darabont script, but he's a douche, so...

Yu: Meh, I wanted to see more of him.
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enoah ballard



Joined: 15 Mar 2008
Posts: 22
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 6:08 pm Reply with quote
Re: The bad guy from the movie
spoiler[Oh right. I thought he intentionally went into the portal thing because other sites with magnetic fields similar to Noah's ark had been discovered, so he planned to just chill in alternate dimensional space until one of the other sites was investigated, and he was laughing maniacally because he managed to get away.][/spoiler]
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Yu Ominae



Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 6:53 pm Reply with quote
The little guy could make a good bad guy, but he's already rogue from the American military so I doubt they'll welcome him back to fix his implants.
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