From the monkeys on the cover, I was sure this was going to adapt a different story.

I had an eye appointment the other day, and had my pupils dilated for a bit, so I wandered around the mall until I felt like driving. Which got me this book! Haruki Murakami Manga Stories, volume 2, adapted by Jean-Christophe Deveney and PMGL. 

Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers; although if you asked me what any one of his novels was about, it's tough to break down. Although, with the three monkeys on the cover of this one, I thought it was going to adapt this brief sequence from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. 

 Shoot, there's two more volumes of this; I'll have to keep an eye out.

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I'm now up to 12 volumes, and 3 action figures!

Because this is my busy season at work, I've been putting in overtime--it'll probably cover my action figure budget for the year, so I shouldn't complain, but I do! Oh, god, how I do. I'm tired, and barely had time to read anything last week. But, I did read another volume of Chainsaw Man, which has been great! Volume 12 was the start of a new storyline, Chainsaw's not in a large chunk of it, and it's still great! I don't know how intentional it is, but it kind of flips the usual superhero "protect their secret identity at all costs" trope on its head, and closes with a pretty perfect encapsulation of that Firefly meme where he's just dumbstruck with the terribleness of somebody's idea, in this case Denji's.

Malreynolds Firefly GIFfrom Malreynolds GIFs

Then, when I was out getting groceries, I found the latest Chainsaw Man figure marked down, and I'm not made outta stone. Extra arms and face pieces!

How often are people worried about looking dumb, when sometimes the stuff that sounds the dumbest is actually the coolest? Hopefully, I'll get to watch the anime sometime. Although, at first listen, isn't the opening to his theme there the first bars in Fugazi's "Waiting Room"? Read more!

Which format will I read this in? Uh, which one's next to me?

I thought I had nattered on about this before: so I have some of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub in Dark Horse's little digests, and First's larger prestige format issues, and the whole thing in digital from Humble Bundle! And yet I'll probably always grab one of these when they're in the cheap bins: from 1988, Lone Wolf and Cub #10, cover by Frank Miller!

This chapter was "Lawless Samurai," and explains a little about the period: a financial crunch had reduced many to part-time status, which undermined the traditional master/samurai bonds of loyalty, and gave rise to orisuke. Literally, it meant "part-time help" but was more accurately lawless thugs for hire. The Lone Wolf, Itto Ogami, murders the heads of three orisuke gangs, before we get to the why: he and his son Daigoro find two young children, about to kill themselves. Their father had been a loyal samurai, but lost face and then his life in a dispute with a gang. Even with Ogami there, the kids were still in a bind: traditionally, honor would demand they avenge their father's death themselves; they couldn't just have Ogami do it. (Although, at this point, he probably could!)

Ogami's answer is, lure him onto the river, spear him to death. He murders the lower-level bosses of the gang--no rule against him doing that!--to bring their target into position. The kids are free to spear-murder the big boss, while Ogami covers them from his men. Honor is satisfied, and so is the reader! 

If I had one prediction for the next four years? I think revenge films are going to come back in a big way. Viewers are going to want the joy of seeing crappy people get what's coming to them. Just a guess.

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Like Reading Rainbow, if the host was lazier and way more potty-mouthed.

I swear I did other stuff on vacation besides read...um, wait, it'll come back to me...I sat in a lake a bit? No, I used to read a ton, but have fallen off, partly because books can be expensive, and partly because at home I spent too much time dicking about on the computer or with action figures. Really quick: Neal Stephenson's Seveneves is undoubtedly the longest of the pile, and I thought would take forever, but it reads like butter. Really good, although I feel like the second half, after a big time jump, could've got a few more pages. Miss Morgan's Book Brigade might not seem like my usual reading fare, but it was written by a high school friend; and was damn good! In World War I, a librarian goes to France, and among other things, changes the way the whole country would see libraries. (Something we could use in this country again; we're kinda takin' libraries for granted! I oughta use mine more, but I like hording books...)

I had to stop midway through this, to put in my DVD of John Dies at the End, but it's on PlutoTV as well. I had read What The Hell Did I Just Read a couple months ago, and have to pick up Jason Pargin's other two books in that series. Ursula K. Le Guin's the Lathe of Heaven might seem old hat with the alternate realities/timelines, but did it first, with a common theme: probably anything you're interested in changing, will have a domino effect of other, unexpected changes. Chainsaw Man is a relatively recent manga, and I picked up the first volume free when I got Lupin III World's Most Wanted. The Lupin one had a different cover than I see online, and reads rather like Spy vs. Spy: not a lot of continuity. Still, I liked Chainsaw Man enough to buy the next volume, and his action figure!

My microwave died, so I had to get a new one yesterday, but I did find the McFarlane Ambush Bug (and Cheeks!) while out! And I'll probably kick myself later for paying close to full price for the WWE Lucha Low Rider, but I'm kind of supporting them in the hopes of getting an in-scale panel van one of these years.

  Tool of the Trade isn't my favorite Joe Haldeman, but it wasn't bad; and Quarry's Climax from Max Allan Collins is a violent, fun read as well; but more later.

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It's weird, I think I would see this more often with bands, and not even necessarily "one-hit wonders." They might have a song I really like, but I also might not feel the need to keep listening to them? This is actually one of my favorite single issues ever, and while I have read more, I don't necessarily see the point. From 1989, Fist of the North Star #5, featuring "Chapter 8: The Fire of Vengeance; Chapter 9: Tenacity…and Rage! Chapter 10: When a Giant Star Falls" Written by Yoshiyuki Okamura (as Buronson), translation by Fred Burke and Satoru Fujii, art by Tetsuo Hara, touch-ups by Wayne Truman. (Oddly, the GCD seems to treat this as new; Viz had collected it from Weekly Shōnen Jump (Japanese: 週刊少年ジャンプ), although I couldn't tell you the issue numbers.) This is also a squarebound number, please excuse that in the scans!

This is hyped as a "Special 64 page origin issue!" as the hero, Kenshiro, and his tagalong sidekick Bat, finally catches up to his foe, Shin, who had stolen Ken's girl Yuria. Literally, not figuratively. Post-apocalypse, Kenshiro had been doing pretty OK: while his master had just passed away, he still had Yuria, and the techniques of the North Star, Hokuto Shinken. Shin was his opposite number, practitioner of the Southern Cross: their master had wanted them to preserve both martial arts, and never fight; but after his demise Shin starts a reign of terror. He easily defeats Kenshiro, claiming his foe lacked "desire, and tenacity." Shin had both in spades, since he was ambitious, and in love with Yuria; who is disgusted by him. To force her to him, Shin pokes holes in Kenshiro, in the shape of the Big Dipper, until she finally relents and claims to love him. Kenshiro is left, face-down and bleeding in the dirt, to begin a long quest to get her back.

Now having learned "tenacity," Kenshiro is seemingly light-years beyond the blindingly fast Shin, effortlessly moving past his attacks and exploding one of his henchmen. (The Hokuto Shinken involved hitting pressure points or tsubo, like hitting someone in just the right spot for their skull to split into two!) Shin opts to remove Kenshiro's motivation, by punching a hole through Yuria: I see what he was trying to do there, but doesn't work. Enraged, Kenshiro smashes Shin's defenses, and punches tsubo into him in the shape of the Southern Cross. "One minute," Kenshiro tells him, presumably before he exploded into a mass of blood and gristle. But Kenshiro turns to Yuria, only to find...she was a doll?

Beaten, Shin tells him how he tried to win Yuria over, by beating his rabble into an army, taking over the countryside, and building a new city, Southern Cross. Yuria was unimpressed, and couldn't stand watching the horrors Shin committed anymore: she breaks her promise to Kenshiro to "live," and throws herself off a building. Shin cried, for the first time in his life, and Southern Cross would become Yuria's tomb. In a final act of defiance, he refuses "to be killed by the Fist of the North Star!" and throws himself off what might be that same building; which might be a less painful end than he would've gotten.

In the end, Kenshiro digs a grave, and buries Shin. Bat asks why, and is told "because we loved the same woman." 

I know I've read more of this series since--I probably read the next three issues Viz put out at the time--but in a lot of ways, the story ends for me right there: the hero gets vengeance, and it ultimately means nothing. Moreover, is there even a reason to go on? OK, I did read a lot of issues over the weekend; and yeah, Kenshiro finds a reason to live. Partially because of a huge retcon of this issue!

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Who knew the future of warfare would be so polite?

Although I haven't watched it regularly in over twenty years, I still dwell on an old Saturday Night Live bit from around the first Gulf War. During a round-table style news discussion show, an army general type ponders how America wants to deploy troops but doesn't want to lose any but invulnerable super-soldiers aren't available. This was some years before drones became more prevalent; which have brought up even more problems; most of which aren't addressed in today's book: from 1992, Farewell to Weapons, story and art by Katsuhiro Otomo, translation by Robert Spaulding, colors by Steve Oliff.

This was a translated reprint of a short story from 1981, a mere year before Otomo's Akira began. Set after a World War IV, a Western squad patrols a city abandoned by Eastern troops; and the power-armored troops run across an automated tank, which the troops call a "Gonk" after the noise it makes. The ensuing battle does not go well for the troops, but when the last soldier's armor is destroyed and he's disarmed, the Gonk has a surprise for him...

I hadn't seen this comic before, although I do have Memories somewhere: it was another Otomo reprint from Epic Comics. There's a pretty good article here that mentions the anime adaptation of Farewell to Arms, Short Peace.

Haven't watched a ton of anime in recent years, but I'll keep an eye out.
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"The End" Week: Area 88 #42!

I don't look at a lot of manga here, but today we have from Viz, 1989's Area 88 #42, story and art by Kaoru Shintani, translation by James D. Hudnall and Satoru Fujii.

Sheer happenstance I even have this issue; I think I picked it up because I liked the Area 88 anime. (The title of one was "The Blue Skies of Betrayal," which is great!) Somewhat unusually, the story takes place in the late 70's or early 80's. (There may be a ton of anime and manga set then, but it's not commonly thought of or imported here!) Young pilot Shin Kazama has it going on: hot rich girlfriend, great job at an airline, good best friend--whoa, not so fast on that last one. Bitterly jealous, Kazama's friend Satoru Kanzaki takes him out drinking, gets him hammered, and gets him to sign up as a mercenary fighter pilot for wartorn Middle Eastern country the Kingdom of Aslan. Wait, not that Aslan...

Betrayed and disraught, Kazama has three choices: desert, and be shot outright. Serve for three years. Or shoot down enough enemy planes to earn a $1.5 million dollar buyout. Over the course of the series, Kazama has to kill or be killed; meets his fellow mercenaries, and wonders if he could ever go home again, literally and metaphorically. Meanwhile, his girlfriend continues searching for him, while the scummy Kanzaki tries to "comfort" her...

I thought Area 88 had a pretty good hook, but it wasn't a big hit here--the manga/anime fans of the day probably didn't want a Vietnam War allegory that didn't have giant robots. #42 was the last issue of the adaptation, although it continued in Animerica; I don't think it was completed in America. Still, Area 88 did have a tie-in videogame, released in America as "U.N. Squadron." That's a pretty good legacy.


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Vacation week: Akira!

I haven't read all of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, but after seeing the movie in a little theatre in Montana I wanted to check out an issue of Epic's 38-issue reprint. Huh, it would've run you a hundred and fifty bucks for the whole series back then. This particular issue is not only way into the series, there's also several scenes that aren't in the movie, like Kaneda and Kai tooling around on some kind of tank-platform-gun thing. Still cool.
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"I love you guys, but I'm not crunching this up in the scanner."

I was finally able to watch the ancient videotape copy of Lone Wolf & Cub: "Baby Cart to Hades" that I bought who knows how long ago for ninety-nine cents. So. Frigging. Awesome. I've only read a few of the reprints--a couple of the old First comics ones, and just a few more of the Dark Horse little square digests, and enjoyed them, but was unprepared for how much I was going to enjoy the movie version.

Of course, I had to find this by that random happenstance I'm always on about, but here's a chunk of it to see if it grabs you. There is some sword-skewering action, but it's probably safe for work, hell, it's from 1972:

I'm not going to lazy out all week with YouTube stuff, but this one's worth it. God, I would love a Marvel Legend/DC Universe Classics scale Lone Wolf and Cub with baby cart. Hmm, probably have to sell the cart separately with all the weapons...

Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub was also the subject of one of the best parodies in Gail Simone's "You'll All Be Sorry". Keep in mind, it's only a slight exaggeration. Very slight. Read more!