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.
Magic Boy or its Japanese title Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke is Toei’s second film from 1959 that later became one of the earliest anime to be shown in American theaters in 1961. Much of the animation style and music is very similar to older Disney movies in that it has cute animals with very bold orchestra and instrumental music. The movie is based on the early life of a fictional character created from the Edo period named Sarutobi Sasuke who became the leader of a legendary ninja group Sanada Ten Braves. It’s said his group assisted warlord Sanada Yukimura during the Japanese civil war in the Sengoku period.
Sasuke lives in a village with his sister and playful animal friends. A large bird by fate or influence of the villain snatches a young dear named Tinkle from play and drops him into a lake where an evil demon named Yakusha in form of a large salamander lives. Our hero and his companions quickly come to the rescue with Sasuke and the mother of the dear jumping into the water to fight off the monster, but Sasuke is defeated and the mother sacrifices herself in place of Tinkle. There Yakusha gains enough power to reveal her true human form and Sasuke decides he’ll seek revenge, as it was millennia ago where a strong wizard sealed her away in her salamander form to stop her from attacking and grieving the area’s people. Soon after Sasuke decides to leave home and finds an old wizard high in the mountains who takes interest in teaching him magic to conquer Yakusha.
The English dubbing from the American movie company MGM includes a bit of added Western music where there wasn’t music near the start and there are very minor changes like which character narrates about the past of the wicked demon. I could say most of it of the movie was left intact including the original music, there’s still the issue of the radical name change and MGM wanting to promote the anime to American audiences with Sasuke as a samurai instead of a shady ninja. The dubbing is very enjoyable and can’t greatly be compared to modern voice acting in anime with different standards, voice actors, and technology. Much of the sound effects are done with instruments, too.
If you like how characters appear much more Asian or admired the odd character designs from the anime Oh! Edo Rocket then you should feel comfortable with Magic Boy. More images in my gallery album. It’s a movie for kids despite the violent use of magic, but it shouldn’t bother adult viewers unless you find cutely animated monkeys, squirrels, and a bear playing together offensive to mature tastes. Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke would be best described as an adventure with historical importance and something new to anyone not accustomed to older anime.
FOX news commenter Lou Dobbs declared two recent movies The Secret World of Arrietty and The Lorax as having a liberal agenda to create “occu-toddlers.” The Lorax is a CG Dr. Seuss movie about taking from the Earth without giving back and The Secret World of Arrietty a Hayao Miyazaki anime based on the novel The Borrowers where really small people live with humans and take what they need to survive. Basically that they’re promoting the anti-industrial views and the protection of the environment from industrialization. Lou Dobbs mentions how the Occupy Wall Street movement pits makers against takers, but I’m not too sure to which of whatever he’s referring to. Hayao Miyazaki movies are often licensed and have showings in theaters, but he is not quite apart of Hollywood. Guests also mention how movies such as these try to parent kids so that parents don’t have to, but that’s under the assumption that the parents aren’t parenting.
Digital Manga Publishing last week announced the licensing of Erementar Gerad. Erementar Gerad or it’s other licensed name from Tokyopop and Geneon Elemental Gelade is an eighteen volume shounen that was originally published in Mag Garden’s Monthly Comic Blade. The new publisher is well known for their online publishing, Kickstarter program with funding from fans for physical releases, and their yaoi. Lots and lots of yaoi to where most manga readers including myself who aren’t into yaoi would overlook the publisher altogether.
In a land called Guardia there are people who can transform into weapons with another person to wield them. Some characters are much more okay with being weapons than others and some weapons wielders are more kind. Cou Van Giruet and Edel Raid partner Reverie Metherlance or Ren for short venture off to find a place called Edel Garden where the living weapons Edel Raids are created. Along their adventure they help others and get themselves in their own trouble with Ren being very special and very wanted for her power.
I must admit my fandom of Erementar Gerad comes originally from the anime, but surely this site doesn’t have any references or imagery to the anime or manga. Upon hearing of a publisher picking up the manga again my thoughts were mixed. In a way I’d gladly read something I’m into with much of it fresh from story differences and length since viewing the anime, but on the other hand I’m quite disappointed in there being a chance of not having a physical release if the digital version isn’t successful enough. A book release would be like buying something twice I’d imagine even though there are many Mag Garden manga I’d gladly buy for myself and for other people if I were able to. Perhaps more actively promoting manga I read more and with Twitter would be helpful and something that could relieve my contempt of cancelations. Hopefully well enough to have other manga favorites like Beyond the Beyond, rise R to the second power, Gamerz Heaven, The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok, The First King Adventure, or Momo Tama to return. Maybe something that wasn’t licensed before like Pangaea/Ezel, Carat!, or Flat even if Tokyopop technically briefly had Flat licensed. Brigid Alverson wrote up an interview with DMP on Erementar Gerad’s release information on MTV Geek. There in the lower part of the interview there’s an email for requesting the licensing of manga and I know it’ll be something I’ll do myself. There isn’t much manga being licensed or fantasy adventures licensed like Erementar Gerad or its sequel Elemental Gelade: Flag of the Blue Sky so being choosey would be wise.
The American government today took down the file sharing site Megaupload, a site where people can upload and download files for free or with paid subscriptions for better speeds and features. Companies, celebrities, people sharing perfectly legal files, and people who share pirated media there including anime and scanlations of manga used the American hosted site. The Federal government is charging the executives of the site with more than $500 million US dollars of lost revenue of copyrighted content and have been arrested along with several other employees who reside outside the US. Official Department of Justice response can be found on justice.gov which is or was down when writing this along with many other sites by denial of service attacks from Anonymous.
Removal of Megaupload has interesting timing since attention of Internet censorship laws SOPA and PIPA have grown after sites like Wikipedia and thousands others blacked out their sites in protest. It would be pretty easy to suggest that Megaupload isn’t a good example of sites that shouldn’t be protected since majority of its use surely was involving copyright infringement, but perhaps it will create an example of what’s to come. There was no due process for the site’s removal as actions were taken with no way for the company or people behind Megaupload to dispute their case. It could have been a blog, news site, or a small hole in the wall. Perhaps having one larger site taken down before any sort of voting in a governing body will create enough stir to stop SOPA, PIPA, or future laws while showing how this can affect people outside of the US.
With one of the largest file sharing sites gone there’s still the issue of the lack of new licenses for manga, innovative ways of distributing product, and other ways of pirating taking its place. There are currently a lot of sites out there with broken embedded videos and links to manga chapters with many of those links to countless little known anime and manga that were never translated or licensed by Western or even Japanese publishers.
Publishers and distributors of media need to adapt and provide better service to combat piracy as opposed to lashing out against their own consumer base. I cannot argue against the removing of Megaupload, but I know for myself that SOPA, PIPA, and Megaupload’s removal won’t get me to buy more than I do. It instead makes me question the morality and ethics of buying. The next time I tell someone of something wonderful to watch or read, I may just stay silent on how to buy it or if there’s a sale and reluctantly concede to arguments about buying versus pirating when in discussion.
This censorship problem can be seen much larger than what it may appear. It’s the merging of government with corporations and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by Supreme Court of the United States making way for more laws like SOPA and PIPA to come.
Very large book publishers Random House and Hachette Book Group have decided to support and lobby for The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US. If SOPA or its backup bill Protect IP Act (PIPA) pass it will greatly change the Internet in many harmful ways for websites all over the web and their users. Random House handles distribution for both Vertical and the American division of Kodansha while Del Rey is a branch of Random House and Yen Press is apart of Hachette Book Group.
The Senate version is PIPA and SOPA is House of Representatives and if either passes it’ll include ways for the government to order American Internet service providers to block domain names of websites, payment services like PayPal to close accounts, search engines to modify their search results to not include sites, and ad services like AdSense from paying out to domains. Under SOPA Internet service providers gain immunity from blocking domains independently without request including if they’re blocking competitors if they themselves deem them as copyright infringing. Both bills would remove the provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that protects web hosts if they make an effort to remove copyright materials upon request. Variations of fee, lawsuit, and prison penalties for unauthorized steaming and downloading of copyrighted materials are there too. All without being under the public eye and without any method to counter or dispute it before actions are taken.
Protecting copyrighted materials for artists is one thing, but this is an extreme and dangerous addition to already existing laws and abilities that can already be used against piracy. Many law professors already have declared the changes unconstitutional as entire sites would mean even protected speech is suppressed, burden of proof is on the accuser, and people are innocent until proven guilty. A blog or user of a site would have to be careful who they’re linking to that the site has original content or permission from copyright holders even if the site just has photos of a vacation, fan art, and screenshots. SOPA also means toying with DNS of domains which could mean a less stable Internet or even less secure, but neither SOPA or its sponsors address this.
Discussion of SOPA and PIPA isn’t enough and along with registering to vote there’s more. Contacting corporations who support these laws, canceling orders with SOPA and PIPA as cancelation reasons, not buying products and services from supporter and their companies, and contacting your politicians are more examples of taking action.
If you see any information as incorrect or have more ways to take action, you may comment here or on the forums and this entry will be edited. Merry Christmas.
