Moyasimon manga review

In the latest manga review for the Daily Yomiuri by Christoph Mark, Mark reviews “Moyasimon”.  Here is an excerpt of his review:

Imagine, if you will, being able to see even the tiniest of bacteria with your naked eye. Imagine if you could even hear those microscopic organisms talk, speaking of the horrors they have planned. Could you even function as a living being? And if people discovered your ability, would they try to use it to their advantage?

This is the life of Tadayasu Sawaki, the protagonist in the Tezuka Osamu Award-winning Moyasimon and a new freshman at Bo Nogyo Daigaku. (The name literally means A Certain Agriculture University.) The son of a bean-sprout farmer, he has the unique ability to see and distinguish between bacteria, a fact he hopes to hide from all but his closest friends. On his first day of school, Sawaki and childhood friend Kei Yuki, the extremely feminine-looking son of a sake brewer, pay a visit to Prof. Keizo Itsuki, an old friend of Sawaki’s father. The kind-hearted yet strange professor knows of Sawaki’s ability and plans to use it to further his research into fermented foods for use in terraforming.

From the get-go, Sawaki and company find themselves under the tutelage of Itsuki, who regularly subjects his students to taste tests of the world’s stinkiest foods, including a stingray fermented with its own urine, a stuffed seal that has been fermented underground and any number of other rancid rations. The students also fall in with two troublemaking sophomores who are experts in sake brewing, including by methods that require the rice to be chewed before production.

Be sure, author Masayuki Ishikawa is not merely out to disgust his readership; the often funny storyline–which is just as focused on the young Sawaki trying to adjust to a rather strange campus life–is aimed at enlightening the reader about agriculture in general and how microorganisms in particular affect our day-to-day lives, for good or bad.

manga review: Love Roma

In a recent review for the Daily Yomiuri, Christoph Mark reviews “Love Roma”:

Being too honest, or merely saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, can destroy a relationship that might otherwise be written in the stars. Anyone who has ever been in love with somebody has surely done so, and no doubt regrets it.

That is, unless you are a high school boy named Hoshino-kun or the love of his life, Negishi-san, the two protagonists of Love Roma, a story about blossoming love between two teenagers, one of whom always manages to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Yet somehow, the two stay together.

Hoshino-kun starts out as a very formal, very polite freshman who seems to be missing that switch most people have in their brains that tells them what not to say and when not to say it. In fact, Love Roma begins with such an instance, as Hoshino-kun confesses his love to Negishi-san, a girl who doesn’t even know his name, in front of her entire class. Embarrassing enough in private, it is downright terrifying for her when it’s done in front of her pubescent peers.

The two begin to date, with the stiff Hoshino-kun spouting off plenty of romantic prose, only to inappropriately cap it off by announcing to her classmates that he wants to touch “her boob,” or openly telling a reporter for the school newspaper that he wants to sleep with Negishi-san and that he has secret desires about her.

Time continues to go by, and their relationship continues to grow despite these constantly embarrassing interjections by him, and her usual response to them, which includes a slap or a punch to the face.

The five-volume series is surprisingly funny, often laugh-out-loud–though half the time is laughing with the comic; the other half laughing at it. The intended humor is funny on its own, but the stiff, almost comical translation left me wondering whether the low quality was intentional. In addition to bizarrely literal uses of perfectly translatable Japanese expressions (“sweet candy and whip” for “carrot and stick”), the use of the third person in reference to the person spoken to, though acceptable in Japanese, is annoying and possibly a form of mocking in English.

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manga review: Tezuka Osamu’s “Pluto”

In a recent manga review, Christoph Mark reviews “Pluto” by Tezuka Osamu. Mark wrote, “It takes a truly talented mangaka, such as Naoki Urasawa, author of several award-winning series, including the brilliant 20th Century Boys, to take on the legendary work of Osamu Tezuka. This seems even more true when looking at the critical review of the Tezuka-inspired Damons in this column last week.”

“Set in the future world of Astro Boy, where robots and humans live side by side, Pluto delves into the issue of human rights (or robot rights), compassion, evolution and what it means to be sentient. Through the work, which began its serialization in 2003, Urasawa also explores social and political issues, often making clear his feelings about the current Iraq war, a futuristic version of which is in the story’s recent past.”

“The story, currently in its sixth volume, is an adaptation of the story of Pluto, the most advanced robot ever created, from Tezuka’s original Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) series. But the new storyline only touches on that series, using its characters occasionally and tangentially.”

“Instead, Urasawa’s Pluto follows a Europol (European Police) robot detective named Gesicht. Believed to be one of the most powerful robots ever built–and certainly the best detective–Gesicht finds himself investigating the mysterious murder of Mont Blanc, a much-loved robot alpinist, which quickly evolves into a serial killing of the world’s most advanced robots and roboticists. The bizarre twist is that they are each found with metal bars or other implements thrust into their heads to represent the horns of the god of the underworld.”

“As the story quickly unfolds, it seems this mystery killer–who is given the name Pluto, which coincidentally is the killer’s real name–is going after members of the so-called Bora mission, a group of scientists and their most advanced robots who inspected a fictitious country in the Middle East following a war there over android rights. But the war was unpopular, and according to many, unjust, as the inspectors were unable to find the devastating robotics they were searching for. Sound familiar, anyone?”

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[VIDEO GAMES] Echochrome for the PSP and PS3

Christoph Mark of the Daily Yomiuri reported, “With so many graphics-intensive video games on the market, one in which the player moves a nondescript mannequin around a screen composed of nothing but black lines and white space seems an unlikely hit. But Mugen Kairo (infinite corridor), also marketed as Echochrome, is proving to be just that.”

“The concept is deceptively simple: “In this world, what you see becomes the truth,” the game’s narrator explains. By changing the camera angle on your screen to alter the reality of the game’s world, you can help your character pass over nonexistent bridges or avoid falling through holes or being blown upward by fans. In a way, the hazards of this M.C. Escher-like world are a lot like the Bugblatter Beast from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: If you can’t see it, it can’t see you.”

“Upon first playing Echochrome, which is available on the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Portable, players are presented with a quick tutorial that runs through the Five Laws or “mysteries”: Perspective Traveling, Perspective Landing, Perspective Existence, Perspective Absence and Perspective Jump. These rules are all one needs to play the game, making it vastly more simple than much of what’s out there.”

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