Category Archives: tokyopop

Top Ten Anime and Manga to Inspire Writers

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in anime, art, author, convention, fairy tale, film, shojo, story, tokyopop, top ten list, tv

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

The stories which inspire you to write will largely depend upon the genre in which you write. However, I have found that stories about the journey of writers, or people of any creative discipline, are especially inspirational and motivating. Here are just a few of the top anime and manga which use this to inspire writers, or any creatives:

  1. Princess Tutu

Have you ever had the feeling that your story is running wild and your characters are making decisions on their own? Well this is an anime in which that literally happens. It starts off as an enchantingly strange tale of a duck-turned-human at a ballet school who turns into a magical girl and uses complex ballet moves to save her beloved prince. It takes its fairy tale inspiration and parodies, subverts, twists, and turns it every possible way. The ballet and classical music references are so accurate that the anime is even used as a reference in university courses and has had academic papers written about it.

2. Whisper of the Heart

One of Studio Ghibli’s most understated films tells the simple story of a young writer working on her first story, adjusting to changes in her life, and finding her place in the world. Some write this film off as boring or lacking in conflict, especially compared to some other Ghibli films, but it is an often painfully honest portrayal of the process that writers go through in their early stages. Like Shizuka, many of us do like to believe that life is like a fairy tale and become sourly disappointed when it doesn’t turn out to be true. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find great stories within our own lives.

All writers will know this feeling

3. Kiki’s Delivery Service

Another Ghibli film and another about a young person discovering their unique talents and forging their own life path. Again, Kiki’s Delivery Service can come across to some as slow and boring as it has no antagonist (outside of one little bitch who rejects her grandmother’s lovingly baked pie). The antagonistic force is actually Kiki’s lack of self-confidence as she goes through a period of transformation in finding her unique skill as a witch. There is also a lengthy portion about Kiki’s interaction with a young artist, which helps her to determine her reasons for doing what she does and gain her confidence back.

Ursula’s painting from Kiki’s Delivery Service

4. Sunshine Sketch

Also known as Hidamari Sketch, I have rambled on before about how this is one of my favourite anime and manga series, both for its lovable characters and how accurately it portrays the emergence of a trainee artist. The protagonist Yuno suffers disappointing setbacks and encouraging accomplishments as she tries to find out what she wants out of her artistic career, while also spending plenty of time having fun with her friends.

5. Kaleido Star

An anime about a girl training at a huge Cirque du Soleil style show, I love how this series portrays both the struggles of an emerging performer and of an established performer, almost in equal measure. It faces some tough issues that artists actually face at the beginning, such as becoming overly arrogant, wanting to hog the spotlight, and the balance between creating art and making revenue from it. It also subverts the recent American Idol idea that a positive attitude alone is enough to succeed, showing that setbacks can and do happen and can even cripple a career. Instead, the message is that consistent hard effort and learning from mistakes are the only way to succeed. The circus performances are also a tonne of fun to watch.

6. Dramacon

Back in the heyday of Tokyopop’s domination of the manga marketplace, they put out this three issue series by Russian-Canadian artist Svetlana Chmakova about a romance blooming at an anime convention. Not only is it a hilarious send up of fandom culture and the convention circuit, it also carries many lessons of becoming a creator, particularly of comics, such as accepting constructive criticism. The standard ‘fantasy forbidding parent’ plot is somewhat clichéd and the suffering artist plot is settled a little too easily, but it still alludes to several harsh truths about being a full time creator, presenting both the positive and negatives. There is an entire scene spelling out the multiple reasons not to be a creator and it is made clear that it is a large risk that requires a strong backbone even if you do become successful.

7. Love Live! School Idol Project

In this anime, a high school student starts up a school idol group as a way to drum up publicity for her school and prevent it from shutting down. Perhaps a somewhat naïve reason to get into the arts, but one which ultimately pays off and helps each of the group members to discover great things about themselves, which is why their group is fittingly named μ (muse). Plus there are more than enough musical numbers and cute outfits to entertain.

8. Full Moon Wo Sagashite

Another series about a wannabe singer, but one with a more rounded and tragic plot. In this case, the protagonist, Mizuki, loves to sing but has a malignant tumour in her throat that can only be cured by removing her vocal cords. She opts out of the surgery to achieve her dream of being a singer, even though it means she only has a year left to live. This is a rather tragic take on the ‘follow your dreams’ plot, but one that is subverted as the story goes on. Knowing that she only has a year left to live actually frees Mizuki from many of the pressures of the music industry and allows her to focus on her music rather than the industry drama.

9. Velvet Blue Rose

This obscure manga is hard to find in English, as unfortunately Tokyopop went bankrupt before the entire series could be translated. But if you can find it, it is both an entertaining story with vibrant characters and an inspiring tale on creating beautiful things for the happiness of others. The wedding dress makers in this manga frequently take on impossible jobs which keep them up multiple nights in a row, yet their passion for their work and the smile on the customer’s faces is what keeps them going. Yet there is also an underlying message about getting out of the studio once in a while to spend time with the people you love. Oh, and lots of lovely pictures of wedding dresses.

10. The Wind Rises

This one more than any other anime on this list will make you cry buckets, but in a good way. It is fitting that for Hayao Miyazaki’s final film he paid tribute to his hero, the real life plane engineer Jiro Horikoshi. The outbreak of World War Two means Jiro has to live with the fact that the planes he loves so much and works on so passionately are being used to kill people. And as we know from history, he was on the losing side of the war. Despite its highly controversial subject matter, it is a tragic yet also inspiring story, teaching us that we can’t control how our work will be used, critiqued, or interpreted, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to make the world a better place. Watching this film actually taught me that the most important thing about being a creative is creating something that inspires others.

What anime and manga inspire you as a writer or creator? Tell me in the comments below!

Advertisements

Manga Review: Fruits Basket Another

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in anime, art, internet, manga review, musings, romance, series review, shojo, story, tokyopop

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

fb another

Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya, the story of a teenage orphan who becomes involved with the reincarnated spirits of the Chinese zodiac, was one of the most influential manga and anime series of my late teen and university years and remains one of my favourite titles ten years later. It was so popular in the west that the end of its print run is probably one of the reasons why Tokyopop closed down. A few months ago it was announced that Takaya was releasing a sequel series online with the same setting but a new cast so of course I was excited. But do we really need another Fruits Basket or is Takaya trying to cash in on her former glory?

The story starts with Sawa Mitoma, a high school girl who purposely avoids interaction with others because she fears she is nothing but a bother. Her mother constantly leaves the house without telling her where she’s going or paying the rent, leaving Sawa to be shouted at by the landlady. After one such occasion makes her late for school and gets her in trouble with a teacher, she is ‘saved’ by a cute boy named Musuki Sohma, a member of the same Sohma clan from the original Fruits Basket. Musuki asks Sawa to go to the student council room after school, where she meets Hajime, another member of the Sohma family…By accidently stepping on his face.

After a few more brief encounters, Musuki announces that Sawa is to be a representative on the student council and all of a sudden the girl who avoided everyone is the talk of the entire school.

There are some instant and noticeable parallels with the story of Fruits Basket. The two Sohma boys are obvious copies of Yuki and Kyo, they might even be their sons, indicating that this is going to be another love triangle story. It already seems that the Kyo clone is going to be the winning love interest. I’m a little disappointed as when I was originally reading Fruits Basket, I shipped Tohru and Yuki for the longest time and thought it would be nice if ‘Yuki’ could be the winner this time. Then again, the Yuki clone is somewhat creepy and forced Sawa into the student council without asking her. Perhaps he is actually Shigure’s son.

I’m also pissed that out of all the five billion characters in Fruits Basket, the only one to make a cameo is Makoto Takei, the obnoxious leader of the student council. The one who Haru showed his… special area to. (It took me years to understand that joke!)

Sawa, like Tohru, is a cute yet plain girl in a criminally short skirt. The big difference I see between her and Tohru is that despite being an orphan and living in the woods, Tohru initially seemed to be endlessly cheerful and optimistic. As the story progressed, it became evident that this was just a mask to deal with her crippling emotional issues. Sawa’s issues are clear from the start, even the cover image spells it out. This made me emphasise with her a lot, especially when the stress gets to her and she starts to cry in public without meaning to, lamenting how she is constantly disappointed in herself. I hate to think what suddenly becoming the centre of attention at school is going to do to her already fragile emotional state.

The artwork and character designs are as adorable as I remember and there is the style of humour that Fruits Basket was known for, especially the face stepping incident. Did the Kyo clone get a good look up her skirt when that happened?

This sequel shows good potential to be just as good as its predecessor and we do know that Takaya is talented enough to pull it off. I do want to find out how Sawa is going to deal with her issues and why she is so important to the Sohmas. It will still take a little longer to see if the series progresses into a worthy successor so I’ll keep reading to see if that happens.

Wicked Lovely Desert Tales, Volume 2: Challenge

22 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in fantasy, manga review, shojo, tokyopop

≈ 1 Comment

Last year I wrote a review for the first issue of a manga series based on the Wicked Lovely novel series. Here’s the synopsis of the first book:

…

Uh…

Something about a desert?

I was really not impressed by the first book. Nothing was explained properly, the story took forever to unfold, the character’s motivations were unclear and the dialogue made no sense.

But guess what, it’s not over yet! Someone at Tokyopop thought it would be a good idea to make the manga tie-in a trilogy. Because you know, those things have worked so well for them in the past…

                                              Shy’s head is a little too close to Rika’s chest…

Book 2 opens with a battle scene between Shy, some kind of fox faerie we met in the first volume, and some other faerie called Mali. It might be because it’s been months since I’ve read the first book, but I can’t recall if she even appeared in that one.

But still, a fight! Something exciting that I can get emotionally invested in! And the artwork even looks like it’s improved a little too. Hey, maybe this series won’t be so bad after all!

                                                   The tilted angles are just my crappy copying.

Yes, you could probably tell I was speaking too soon. An otherwise engaging fight scene is peppered with the nonsensical dialogue I mentioned earlier. It’s pieced together so poorly that each speech bubble seems like it’s been copied and pasted from a different book altogether. On top of that, in the background are some faceless characters and I can’t tell who they are. They might be part of the novels, but how does that help me, who hasn’t read them?

We then see the protagonist Rika, a faerie, and her love interest Jayce, a human, on a date in town. It seems that spending two hours together then kissing means that they’re in love now.

They seem to have forgotten that first time around, Rika made a huge bitching deal about how iron and steel are poisonous to her which is why she is trapped in the desert forever. So why are they on a date in town? Even the smallest towns have lots of buildings made of iron and steel. Should I even be questioning the logic of this series anymore?

The two of them discover Shy bleeding on the backstreets, having been stabbed by Mali with an iron rod. Rika somehow transports him to her cave in the desert so he can recover. This would normally be quite an interesting and dramatic plot point. Except that they drop it pretty quickly so that Shy can go on about how he’s not going to seduce Rika because….Uh….He doesn’t like blondes? He seems awfully talkative and perky for someone who has just been near fatally stabbed.

                                                                        Shit just got real.

He tells Rika to go back and fetch Jayce. Yep, because being in a busy urban area with his friends is a lot more dangerous than being in a cave in a desert surrounded by these morbid faerie things.

We then cut to a girl skateboarding. Nice and all, but it doesn’t seem to do much for the plot either. Why is it there, and why does it take up several pages?

 

Next is a funny moment when Keenan, the Summer King (of course that title means nothing to me. You could call him The King of Gelatinous Cubes and it would be the same to me) and Rika’s maybe former lover arrives at the cave. He’s a bit peeved to find foxy man lying in her bed, showing off his perfectly smooth man legs.

The two of them bitch at each other for a while until Rika arrives and she and Keenan bitch at each other for a while.

Also a return of the confusing artwork, as there’s a panel that seems to me like it isn’t drawn quite right. Rika appears to have her mouth wide open for no reason. It looks like she’s about to breath a fireball on Keenan for no reason.

So Keenan leaves and Jayce arrives and he and Rika spend a long time talking about how no other faeries are in line for her heart. This is pretty much the only proper development of their relationship we get in this volume. It’s not exactly romantic if Rika is constantly reassuring Jayce that she doesn’t fancy anyone else, when she so does. She sits awfully close to Shy most of the time.

Jayce asks to hear more about the faerie world, so I guess he’s just as confused as I am. And then they spend a long time talking. And talking. And more fricking talking. Obviously it doesn’t answer any questions so Jayce just sits at the side and doodles, and man he can draw fast! Or rather, the panels are set up so poorly that it appears that he can do four drawings in about half a second.

So finally we get another fight scene – Rika verses Malli and the desert faeries. We only had to sit through all that damn politics to get to it. And still there isn’t any build up to it. It literally cuts straight from Rika getting all cuddly with Jayce to the fighting. It’s basically the same as a jump cut in a film – incredibly jarring.

These sudden changes in Rika’s mood also make me wonder how we’re actually supposed to perceive her character. Is she a shy, lonely, innocent girl trapped forever in a desert prison? Or is she the tough as nails strongest faerie who kicks some arse to keep order in her desert? If she’s a character with hidden depths, then these changes need to be much more clear cut and we need to know the reasons for her reactions.

Just as you’d expect, the only cool scene in the entire book is over in just a few pages. Malli injects Rika with something, drags her off and ties her up, then reveals to her that it was Shy who pushed Rika and Jayce together. Wow, it only took five sixths of the book for the drama to kick in! Rika overpowers Malli, confronts Shy, confronts Jayce then calls a lady called The Winter Queen (faeries have phones now?) and the comic ends.

Aside from some nicer art (the faint image of snowflakes around the winter queen are a nice touch) and a few cool scenes, this book has all the same problems as the first one. Except that this one has an even worse flaw – The good bits are breezed over in exchange for endless talking about mindless, confusing faerie politics. Because that’s what teenage girls want when they read a book – politics! I’m not saying fantasy novels can’t have politics in them, in many cases they can be quite interesting, but it should back up the story rather than put the readers to sleep.

After two books and endless prattling, I still have no idea what these faerie things are. We hardly ever see them doing anything cool. They seem no different than ordinary humans, especially since they forget their own limitations. If you’re going to have magical creatures in your book, MAKE THEM MAGICAL!!

I was nice before, but I am starting to question Melissa Marr’s abilities of a storyteller. She certainly doesn’t take advantage of the visual medium of graphic novels.

The whole thing just feels like a huge wasted opportunity. The very first scene was a great set up – A human girl transformed into a magical creature and forced to live in a desert, in love with a man who can’t even see her or even knows she’s there. Whatever happened to that story? What is this book even supposed to be about?!

Cloud verdict – 2/10.

Manga Review – Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales

02 Saturday Jul 2011

Posted by in fantasy, manga review, tokyopop

≈ Leave a comment

Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales. Volume 1: Sanctuary

After my first read through of this manga, my initial thought was ‘what the hell?’ After a second read through, my thought was ‘Uhhh….’

Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales: Sanctuary (so good they named it three times!) is a sort of manga add on to the novel Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. I haven’t read the book nor have any intention to, but it’s gotten very positive reviews and a dedicated fanbase, so I’ll assume it’s pretty good. That said, this is the age that gave us the Twilight fangirl…

This manga apparently focuses on characters that were only mentioned in the novel and the script was written by the same original author. Apparently, each of the novels is about a different character, which I’m not sure I’m a fan of. There’s nothing worse than getting really attached to a great character then opening the next book in the series and finding out that you’re not following them anymore.

The story of Desert Tales, from what I can tell, is this – A girl named Rika is watching a sensitive artist called Jayce who she is in love with, but he can’t see her because she’s a faerie. Don’t bother asking me what that is because the manga never explains.

Despite the confusion, the opening is rather sweet, but unfortunately it spirals quickly into just plain weird. Some other kind of faerie called Keenan arrives for what is supposed to be an exposition scene yet explains nothing. I hate clunky expo dumps but exposition should at least explain something! Also, Rika’s emotions make her seem almost bi-polar in this scene. One moment she’s all sad and mopey, the next she’s angry and then she starts this weird laugh for no adequately explained reason. But Keenan can make chairs out of sand, that’s really cool!

All I can gather from the backstory is that Rika was once human and she and Keenan were lovers. She screwed up some kind of ceremony which made her carry ice in her body and now she has to live in the desert because iron and steel are poisonous to her.

Or something.

That’s the first major problem with this manga – Nothing is explained properly! Maybe people who have read the original book will understand it, but those who haven’t are left completely stumped. I’ve read plenty of other ‘tie in’ mangas that made sense to those who haven’t seen the original material and may even inspire them to check it out. This one just alienates a huge chunk of potential readership. It’s almost no wander Tokyopop has gone out of business.

But anyway, back to the story. After her uber emo moment, Rika spots Jayce and his friends climbing up a cliff. After a storm. With no harnesses or protection.

And their stupidity is rewarded. Some creatures called the desert fey appear and again no explanation of who they are or what they’re doing there. I’ll just assume they’re the evil faeries. They cause Jayce to fall but Rika catches and saves him. Somehow this means that Jayce can now see her.

Wait, what? How does that work? Why didn’t she explain that before? Why didn’t she make herself visible before now? And why did the desert fey try to kill Jayce anyway? You can see the frustration I get from reading this.

After that it picks up a bit because there’s a scene where Jayce is shirtless. Then again, if I wanted hot shirtless men then I could just read yaoi instead. In fact, why aren’t I reading yaoi right now?

By this point, the manga is just coming up to the halfway mark. That’s the second major problem with this manga – The story takes for-fricking-ever to tell anything. So many of the panels seem unnecessary and others just make no sense to me.

The only other option would be to admire the artwork, but it’s not exactly spectacular. There’s some nice panels of the desert and the shirtless scene I mentioned. But other than that, there’s nothing particularly interesting to look at. The dyed parts of Jayce’s dreadlocks make him look like he has branches coming out of his head!

The rest of the book shows Rika trying to protect Jayce from the desert fey without revealing her identity or being poisoned by metal. The first half was confusing but in the second half the story runs all over the place and I can barely tell what the hell is happening. The romance scenes between Rika and Jayce are very sweet and tender. Yet in a surprising change from the rest of the story, the romance progresses awfully quickly which just feels unnatural.

There are a few nice moments and you do feel a lot of sympathy for Rika, but otherwise the art is average, the characters are underdeveloped and the storytelling is downright terrible. The worst offender is a double page spread with word bubbles that just repeat the dialogue that has just taken place.

The manga does contains an extract from another of Marr’s faerie novels and although it’s not the best prose ever or the type of thing I would read, it’s much better than the manga. It shows that the author is very inventive and her storytelling style does work in novel form.

The only people I would recommend this book to are those who have read the original novel and have never read a manga before. I don’t condone Melissa Marr for trying her hand at manga, admittedly I’d like to do it myself someday, but I think she should stick to a medium that she is good at.

My verdict – 3 out of 10