I have a favorite anime series.  I found it last February when I was checking out a lot of fan-subs. Out of all the anime I have watched, and I have seen quite a variety to put it mildly, this single series is my absolute favorite.

Not many people seem to actually like this series.  They cite the “poor animation quality” that the show has, which is like saying a forest sucks because it’s not completely composed of quality hardwood trees. Much of the seemingly poor quality comes from the manga artist’s way of drawing super deformed characters.  Instead of becoming little fat midgets, they just become very simplified, especialy the hands which tend to look like mittens.  It works.  It takes some adjustment if you aren’t used to it, but it works.  I enjoy it more than the cheesy over-shadowing technique which a lot of anime these days seem to cling to.

The series itself  is a  gag-style comedy involving Japanese high school delinquents, which is one of my favorite genres to be quite honest.  I’m not sure why that is.  It involves a supernatural theme to it, which lead to the inclusion of a gender bender.  I don’t like gender benders, usually, but that’s only because it’s generally used as a completely cliché gimmick.  This one isn’t really gimmicky.  It’s the basis of the main character’s drive and also opens up a theme of the expected differences between genders.

The main characters are great. They’re a little weird, but very likable. I have this weird sort of attachment to each one of them that almost makes me feel I’m seeing some very dear old friends, each time I watch the show. I’ve watched the fifty episode series about twice, some episodes even more.

After watching the entire series, I decided to check to see if any of the manga was translated. I knew that there was a manga because the art, characters, and story type were extremely reminiscent of a manga that one of my friends had pointed out to me the previous year. I found to my absolute glee that it was not only translated, but licensed. It was put out by VIZ, and all twenty volumes were out already. I was ecstatic.

Then I checked the VIZ website to read a preview of their translation. I noticed that the main character’s nickname was changed to a more English sounding name. That worried me. It worried me because VIZ also published Detective Conan and changed the names of most of the main characters to English ones (“WHY DID YOU SAY YOUR NAME WAS CONAN?! YOU’RE NOT SOME FOREIGNER, JIMMY!”). I was worried that they would change other names, although I couldn’t see any other changes in the preview given. I was having doubts about ordering it then, although I really couldn’t afford to anyway at that point.

Later, I found the series while going through the RightStuf catalog to fill out an order. I noticed that they didn’t have the complete series. The first that they had was volume four and several of the later volumes appeared to be missing as well. I looked up the series on VIZ again and found that the series had been discontinued even before I had checked it the previous time. I felt I had missed a chance on a very good thing.

Fast forward a couple months. I hadn’t watched the series for a while, but I still occasionally thought about it. Actually, I thought about it excessively at times. Then I’d go without thinking about it for a week or so.

Last Saturday was a day I was thinking about it a lot. I worked in the bakery from three in the morning until around noon. If I was carrying a loaded tray and had to kick the swinging doors open, I kicked them like one of the characters. If I had to get through a tight space or let someone pass by me, I squeezed through like another character. If I had to bag buns, I amused myself through through pointless introspection, like yet another character. If I noticed something that I should fix but really didn’t want to because it was tedious but I knew I’d feel guilty if I left it undone, I fixed like I always do, but it reminded me of yet another character’s similar trait.

After I got off, I took a shopping trip with my mother to Madison. We, of course, stopped at the Frugal Muse which is the best used bookshop in the entire world, as far as I’m concerned. As I tend to do, I made a beeline to the manga section and found four books that validated the entire trip. They were only three dollars a piece but they were worth more than the entire mass of swag that I purchased on the rest of the trip. I’m not totally sure how much I spent, but it was over a hundred.

Now, when ever I look at a my manga bookcase, I get the warm fuzzies by just glancing at the top shelves.

The translation wasn’t bad at all. Megu being changed to Meg was the only name change I could spot, besides certain characters being referred to by their first names as opposed to their last names more often than I remembered in the anime. The greatest benefit is seeing my favorite characters whenever I want to. I can just pick up a book and see Genzo acting like a totally lovable moron, Yasuda smiling with his trademark perverted grin, and Fujiki over thinking things and taking solace in the fact that he is totally average.

I’m going to be on the look out for the rest of the volumes. It’ll be at my own pace, though. Buying the entire series outright detracts from the excitement of finding them in unexpected places.

Retsu from Tomodachi by Hara Asumi.  Successful comic relief character is successful.  I cheered.

I can’t belive it’s taken me this long to read the entire series.  I loved it ever since I read the first chapter, which was a loooong time ago.  I finally finished it tonight.  I’m currently considering it equal in awesomeness to Penguin Brothers.  I wonder if that’s okay.

It was my kind of story, though.  Strong heroine, awesome characters, complex developing relationships.  It was also a romantic comedy that was light on the romance, very heavy on the comedy.  I prefer it that way.  Overly romantic stories make me gag.

I’ve been reading a lot of manga lately. I usually go for a healthy mix of comedy, gag, action, psychological, horror, and supernatural themes. Honestly, I’ll read just about anything as long as it’s not too clichéd. And given time I’ll read stuff that is as well.

The only types of manga I can’t stand are ones that exist only to be cute, pointless disgusting, or romantic. Also stuff that tries to hammer you over the head with a “deeper meaning” when there is a slow-moving or absence of plot. However, I can totally ignore those points if they include even one character that I really, really like.

A lot of stuff I’ve found recently involves vampires, which seem to be rather popular right now. I’ve yet to find one better than Traveller of the Moon. I don’t care what anyone says, Ida is the best vampire ever. He’s cute and has no idea where babies come from so I think he works perfectly. I really don’t think vampires work as sexy. They only work if they are either cute, scary, or comic relief. I feel the same way about miscellaneous playboy characters.

Just my opinion.  No one asked me, of course.  I just think they’re being a bit drastic with the whole Erratic Direction Gambit they’ve been doing thus far.

I mean, for a couple weeks, you’d go to an anime news site and read a press release that stated that a coalition had been formed that was going to stamp out scanlations once and a for all.  And then you’d go back the next day and read that the coalition decided that maybe scanlations weren’t all that bad for the industry.  And then a new press release would pop up a few days later stating, “STOP IT.  WE REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME, GUYS.  GUYS.  WE MEAN IT.”

Of course, if you went to actual scanlation sites during this time, you’d see that many sites were shutting down for good, or at least moving their releases to IRC.  Some of them had gotten C&D orders.  Others just sensed impending doom and figured that the coalition would start moving onto more legally aggressive tactics and decided that they didn’t want to spend jail time for thankless hours of translating and editing.  Others were totally ignoring everything and keeping on with their hobby.

I can’t figure out whether this is better or worse than RIAA.  I mean, they’re being a bit gentler than RIAA, as they are, so far as I know, handing out C&D orders instead of going directly to RIAA’s trademark big hammer move: the huge random lawsuit.  It’s the random direction changes that are bothering me.  If you’re going to form a coalition and issue press releases, I would think it would be helpful to decide what you approve and disapprove of first.  Especially when you know that your press release will NOT be ignored by the millions of rabid fans that want to get their hands on the type of product that the members of your coalition own virtually all the rights to.

As a someone that loves fan translations, I’m worried.  Most of my favorite series only exist in English as scanlations, and I really don’t like the fact that I’d be potentially missing out on new series that I would enjoy.  I try to be a good fan by buying titles I like when they come out in English, and honestly a lot of them have.  It’s  just that they may never have gotten noticed if it wasn’t for the scans.

I also may never have noticed that they were actually out in English unless I happened to be in a large book store.  This does not happen very often.  I live in a small town that only has one small bookstore which doubles as a liquor store.  They do not have a manga section, needless to say.  So the only time I ever get to peruse a huge selection of  manga is if I travel to a large city.  The two closest ones are each about an hour and a half drive away.   It’s not a trek you would make just to some manga.

Every time I do go to a larger store, I look at the manga section to see if any previously scanlated titles have come out.  Sometimes titles that don’t interest me are there. “Oh. Mamotte Lolipop.  I remember it being pretty but generic.  Pass.”  Other times I react a little more excitedly. “GIN TAMA!  FOUR VOLUMES ARE OUT EVEN! HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?!  I BUY THEM.  I BUY THEM ALL RIGHT NOW!”  That was a while ago, of course.  But I reacted similarly to The Demon Ororon, Nabari no Ou, and B.O.D.Y.

If there are no titles I know, I usually browse.  I’ll go for interesting titles or authors that I have read before.  I’ll go for shoujo, but I will NEVER pick up one with a pink cover in an actual bookstore.  I’ll generally read the blurb on the back (Not a useful source of info.  More on that later.) or read a few pages to see if it strikes my fancy.  I sometimes find a decent one, but most of the time it’ll be a volume that I buy, read, and never buy another volume of.  I’ll probably enjoy it and read it over again, but it won’t leave a lasting impression on me because one volume usually is not enough to get into a story with.  Sometimes, here I am thinking of Skip Beat, it doesn’t even cover the basic premise.  Sadly, I have over twenty of these titles on my shelf.  I can’t bear to get rid of them because I know I will eventually want to read them again, but I feel guilty that I only have the first volume.

Anyway, now with not being able to go to larger cities, I generally shop online for manga.  The problem is that unless I know a series from reading at least part of it, I am very unlikely to go for it.  The sites usually only offer the little advertisement blurb on the back, which is meaningless and full of clichéd book-marketing buzzwords.

For instance, I looked at Alice in the Country of Hearts on RightStuf the other day and it had this to say:

Alice, who has fallen asleep in her garden, wakes up to find a white rabbit wearing clothes?! The rabbit forcefully drags Alice into the rabbit hole, where he turns into a young man with rabbit ears and leads her into a frightful world where the fairytale-like citizens wield dangerous weapons for an insidious cause… Unable to return home, will she be able to find happiness in a world full of danger and beautiful young men?

Okay, the first sentence lets you know that it’s based on Alice in Wonderland, which is not very interesting because a lot of manga have at least one Alice in Wonderland parody chapter in them. The second sentence hints at being abducted by a Moe Boy, which could potentially turn out to be interesting, but usually doesn’t.

Then it drops a load of overused buzzwords that hint at some sort of dark plot. To me it sounds like it could that the citizens are kidnapping others for medical or magical experiments to create bio-weapons to gain an upper hand in a long-running Cold War. But I also read a lot of horror manga and play Shin Megami Tensei, so I can easily come up with stuff like that.

The last sentence is a draw for the Bishie-fan group. The ones that will only buy manga for the beautiful men in it. I am not part of this group and find them obnoxious.

So I read some of the scans to see what the series was really like. I started reading and sat mesmerized until I got to the end of the first chapter in the second book. And then I ordered all the volumes currently released immediately. It was brilliant. I couldn’t believe it. The art was amazing, the characters were unique and likable, and the story was fascinating in a way that would only be gleaned from the blurb through use of large amounts of psychoactive drugs.

Honestly, the heroine was kickass. She doesn’t seem that strong physically, but she’s not a wilting violet at all. She easily stand up to an entire cast of mentally disturbed characters and even goes so far as to befriend them. The rabbit is was maniacally insane in way I liked very much. He reminded me of a combination a couple of characters I used have have in my own comic, only better than I could ever hope to draw or write for. The other characters were were just as unique and totally unlike the generic reverse harem that you see in most shoujo.

The plot wasn’t totally original, but it was put together in a very intriguing way. It was like the plot of first Professor Layton game mixed with certain elements and the general weirdness of The Phantom Tollbooth, stirring in a big old wad of Monkey’s Paw morals, fondued in the kind of dark fascination that I would normally associate with as series like Hatenko Yuugi (I should have ordered that too), and finally topped with a heathy dollop the phrase, “Please kill me and release me from this nightmare.” I loved it.

I also ended up ordering Beast Master, Dengeki Daisy, High School Debut, and Suzunari. All of these were previewed by a similar process. In fact, I read the whole of Beast Master a couple of years ago and still ordered it. The only one that I ordered that I haven’t read any of yet is Aspirin. I bought it based on a review that implied it was second in comedic genius only to The Violinist of Hameln, which is one of my all time favorite scanlated series.

Basically, I feel that scanlations are the biggest marketing tools the manga industry has available for people like me. I think that they’d be foolish to squelch it.

I want to own it so bad!  I can’t afford ordering online right now, mainly because I’d have to order a ton of other stuff to get it shipped free.  I’d probably get Beast Master (which I have been neglecting to do for a long time) and any other Motomi titles that I can find to fill out the order.  Maybe some Gin Tama too.  Can’t right now though.

Apparently the fifth volume of Momo Tama is coming out in November.  Can’t wait to read that one either.

I certainly do wish that we had  a proper book store around here.  I’d probably live there.  The only one that we have in town is also a liquor store and is half filled with books by local authors.  Writing Sterling North-esque memoirs seems to be a popular activity among old men around here.  Also: unoriginal and campy Sci-Fi.