And this is why I always tell my friends to keep their girlfriends on a leash.

I wish I was making this up…

Heroman is a story with kid who finds an abandoned robot toy from a commercial he wanted and befriends after it gains the ability to come to life and big enough to fight. Together they combat aliens and corruption to protect their friendship and lives of people. Video is a fan created mashing of the Heroman anime and the Disney movie The Iron Giant. Character roles fit and the voice overs match the animation.

Volume one and two of the Stan Lee manga Heroman are on Amazon for pre-ordering. It would be great if the manga and novel publisher Vertical would finish Heroman with all of the volumes. Vertical is still in operation and by no means do they have a reputation of canceling great manga after so many volumes, but Heroman is something that I would enjoy and that is not a good sign like the canceled manga bellow.

Alive: The Final Evolution – Del Rey
Aventura – Del Rey
Beyond the Beyond – Tokyopop
DNAngel – Tokyopop
Gamerz Heaven – ADV Manga
Kino’s Journey (novel) – Tokyopop
Momo Tama – Tokyopop
Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok – ADV Manga
Peacemaker Kurogane – ADV Manga
Peace Maker – Tokyopop
Qwan – Tokyopop
Rise R to the Second Power – ADV Manga
The First King Adventure – ADV Manga

Lagoon Engine Einsatz’s mangaka has not continued the story after the first volume and Flat never had its first volume distributed by Tokyopop, so those are left out. A lot from the list are favorites or at the very least manga that enjoyed much because of the mangaka. Heroman show no signs of having poor sales and has the big named American comic creator Stan Lee behind it, but don’t think for a moment that it is invulnerable. What I have learned is to show appreciation and to be vocal about what you love. Not doing so will could mean being bitter or broken.

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.

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 before I even realized it, and now all my posts are just 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.