FLCL the manga is based on the same named GAINAX anime of a boy Naota in a quiet city and his life that turns upside down after a Vespa scooter rider Haruko Haruhara slams him with a guitar. Naota’s head is hit hard and leaving a large growth on his head that spits out mecha from medical equipment manufacture Medical Mechanica. Haruko is from a group called Galaxy Space Police Brotherhood and stays close to Naota for her search in finding a powerful space pirate known as Atomsk. Mega corporation Medical Mechanica is using the robots to capture Atomsk to conquer the galaxy causing a large showdown.

No question in getting this as an owner of the original Tokyopop release of FLCL and the Japanese Kodansha Box versions with silver slip covers and extras. The new omnibus by comic publisher Dark Horse sports almost all of the same colored illustrations found in each Kodansha Box version. Front cover of Naota is a full cover image that is on the back of volume two and the back is an image from the back of volume one’s Kodansha Box cover case. In the back of the omnibus is a left to right short depicting a gun fight with the characters called The Forth Studio. Each page of the short is black with author notes between the white lines of the art and English translations bellow.

My experience with FLCL was back in time when living in foothills of a big city with a small town feel and countless thriving mom-and-pop shops. The city’s shopping mall and attractive main streets were in walking distance. Bookstores would have shelves bursting for more space, myself flipping through manga for finding new reads, and floors covered with people reading. Reading FLCL harks back to a time of escape from an abusive father and when the whole animanga medium felt fresh.

One amazing aspect of the manga is the freedom the mangaka Hajime Ueda flaunts with abstract artwork. Panels are not always boxes, characters are illustrated for each moment, and artwork is heavily styled without too much complexity. Fans of this book will also enjoy Hajime Ueda’s other two-volume work Q Ko-chan published by Del Rey.

Forums had frequent threads about what Fooly Cooly meant, what the hell they just watched or read, and speculation on what viewers believed were symbolic or metaphors for coming of age themes. Anime and the manga had its criticism for being random and plotless by watchers and readers. Understand my FLCL fascination would require knowing my acceptance of story with little need for explaining fantasy, science, or even plot. Each anime and manga is its own world with its own laws of how technology works and social behavior. Explaining could hinder the experience much like the anime Noein: To Your Other Self episode revealing much of the science in detail to where it obstructs story while being boring and obvious. Not having expectations with story and satisfaction with spending extra time on each page’s art and subtly shows excellence. FLCL is what it is with flawless success and creates fandom discussion that debates itself even today. Its story does not follow the anime close, but remains just as faithful as a traditional adaptation and the differences make it more worth reading if one’s only experience is the anime.

Dark Horse Comics has a preview and Amazon has it for the price of a single volume of manga.

Illustration Source: Pixiv

I will tell you why we lost.
Not enough people voted for us.
Not enough people voted for us, enough times.
I at least know I voted three times.

A security issue with Polldaddy is the reason we sit at a whopping eighty-four votes today.

Thank goodness, I feel so much better with that weight off my chest.

In a post-apocalyptic world tribal villages struggle to live in a wrecked landscape with many deadly past remains. The Han tribe’s two warriors Flene and Lek have the job to protect their people and prevent the kidnapping of women of an already male dominate village. An enemy named Tanguin has been taking the women with a massive mecha ship to his mountain of the same name. Tanguin strikes at the very start, but Flene and Lek’s attempt to stop the monster sized machine proved to be of no use. At that point the village is fed up enough to make the pair journey to Tanguin Mountain with a couple villagers and a magical shape shifting girl Kuree.

Mechanical designs are different in they seem geared for flight and land. Characters are animated with abstract posing to add to the speedy movement and funky character designs. Running has exaggerations and physical length of characters are off from being realistic without turning comical.

Post-apocalyptic stories aren’t always stale when they create wonder about how the world turned out as it did, how long can such technology go without maintenance, and where humanity would be after it all fades away. One would think there would people trying to rebuild with the knowledge of the past, but like real life common study is needed for the complex. The OVA is too brief to give for character development, but it’s an adventure in battling the inside and out of an overwhelming beast from the past.

Cool Cool Bye is a forty-minute anime OVA from 1986. Age, origin in time where OVAs came in bigger numbers, and lack of licensing made this a little known gem.

It’s time for a paradigm shift. There’s just too much negative energy going around, and I think it’s about time I change my stance. I am going to stop hating anime. It’s just so easy to bash a series on pure conjectures rather than defend a worthless anime on its positive aspects. I admit I fell victim to this lazy writing style some time ago before I even realized it, and now all my posts just seem so full of hate. I used to be the guy who couldn’t give an anime a thumbs down. Now I hate series based on the color of underwear I am wearing that day.

I remember a time when I was just a wee lad arguing with my friends about which Shonen Jump series was the best anime ever made. Ah, those were the times… I used to have this belief that no matter how boring or ridiculous an anime is, I would watch it to the end regardless of personal feelings or opinions. The only justification for this tremendous waste of time was to conclude that whatever I had just seen must be the greatest anime ever made. This made things complicated, because I was forced to do research and assign blame to individual members of the production staff for each minutia of detail that reduced the release from its potential perfect score. Then I compiled a list of its pros to reinforce my conviction on why it was a great anime. From there, I would head to school the next morning, armed with my wealth of useless knowledge to do battle with my potential opponents in the area behind the school reserved for the bottom rungs of high school social strata.

One anime changed all this: Azumanga Daioh.

Azumanga Daioh, in all objectiveness, is a work of art. The animation is superb for a series made up of short minimalist characters. The setting was at the time a rarity: short skits and situation comedy. The gags are original and highly cultured, setting a precedence which many series imitate to this day. The voice actors fit their individual characters to a tee. The staff was full of fresh progressive individuals full of energy and enthusiasm, bringing ideas to the table which many anime still exploit. But for the life of me, I just can’t like this anime, and I have no fucking clue why.

Unfortunately, I haven’t learned my lesson, so rather than review anime calmly and neutrally, I will begin to do the complete opposite of what I have done so far. I will treat every anime as they were meant to be treated: with absolute ardor. I intend to become a weeaboo, and love everything I watch, regardless of how much I hate it. All my articles hereon will be from the other side of the fence. Ciao.

Black Gate or alternatively known as Reverse/End is a Yukiko Sumiyoshi three volume manga licensed Tokyopop in an omnibus only book. Characters are very well drawn with a fresh variety of expressions to give humor from the mangaka’s experience as a creator of gag shorts. Main characters and the gang are a wonderful mix of social misfits that range from the abused, arrogant, and bossy. The pacing of the story develops without too much drag and builds up with flashbacks and well spread out hooks throughout the adventure.

The story is about gate closers known as Mitedamashi who have the job of closing bad gates and supernatural people known as Gate Keepers who manage the gates for people to pass into the afterlife. White gates are large holes that appear normally when someone is about to pass and black are the bad ones that try to create deaths, but both are only able to be seen by Gate Keepers and a limited number of humans. We start off with a Mitedamashi named Senju who was given the duty to protect a special child with hidden power to discover named Hijiri. Mitedamashi have an organizer to give them work with payment for each closed gate, how large the closed gate is, and if there are other related tasks. Sadly Senju is pretty poor despite having such an unusual career and has had to take normals jobs as supplementary income for feeding the duo. It turns out Hijiri is the last of the race of Gate Keepers that along the way helps to acquire new allies for his adventure to become useful and a leader, but it seems such great power is dangerous and wanted by those who wish to end death.

One of my favorite areas of the plot is of Senju exiting the shower and Hijiri being forced down to the ground. Hijiri’s shirt is opened as it’s decided that he’ll enter a party at a wealthy mansion as a young girl in order to find a black gate within an otherwise hard to enter location. At the mansion the rich father who owns the place is throwing a birthday party for his daughter in order to help his hurting business. During the party Hijiri makes friends with the not so thrilled daughter and is dressed up in a much more stunning outfit by her due to the slapped together appearance he entered with. It’s warming in that after the gate is closed and Hijiri’s gender is revealed the girl finally is happy despite none of her friends were allowed to be there. Instead she made a new friend with a bit of entertainment that came along with the gate closing and Hijiri’s mouthy chatter.

Certain characters remind me much of Maki Murakami’s manga Gamerz Heaven. Hijiri is like the Navigator from Gamerz Heaven’s Nata in that he’s the kiddy cute character with digital numbers sometimes appearing in his eyes and magical powers that seem technological.

Best of all Black Gate should be fairly cheap if found at a local store and can be even bought new on Amazon for a couple bucks plus shipping. Special pages by Yukiko Sumiyoshi accompany the book with drawn pages of notes, thanks, and artwork with summarization of characters as the story moves.

I wanted to feign ignorance about the massive e-penis battle called Aniblog Tourney, but in three days we will be going head-to-head with some Super Care Bear blog called Dah Fook. You have to be a true fan to remember their URL by heart. They may know their way around Photoshop, but there was once a time when I was young and nubile and thought myself a graphic designer as well. Once my grand and glorious leader Jura returns from his pilgrimage to the land of beautiful little boys, we’re sure to have something up our sleeves in terms of website design… I hope. For one thing, I really want to allow nested comments.

In eager anticipation that I am absolutely correct, I have some preliminary designs already in the works:

I’ve done away with all the unimportant tagging, clouding, and other neat features that make this site look more professional and decided to go with the personalized blog look. After all, I’m the only one that matters anymore. Not only will it convey the sarcastic humor I’ve grown accustomed to in a more loving way, but it will increase the cuteness factor by about ten fold. I guess the forum module has to go, in order to make room for the massive amount of hentai I’ll be using the server to back up. Hentai is hotter when it’s streamed. I’m not paying for the bandwidth, so who cares? I’ll also be streaming random J-pop music to distract the readers from pointing out rather obvious grammatical errors and the like.

Oh, the possibilities are endless. I’m sure there’s seven portions of happiness waiting for me at Uncle Josh’s ranch!

Moral of the Day: Fuck it, fire it.