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hrm

I am reconsidering my assessment of my toe as non-broken: much of the general swelling has gone down, leaving a nice big lump right at the impact point, and it's actually starting to hurt a bit when I bend it, and throb a little when I'm just sitting there not doing anything. Again, not that it changes anything other than allowing me to whine a lot online and at my mother.

No picture, because my digital camera inexplicably reboots Windows when I disconnect it, whether I disconnect it properly using the Add/Remove Hardware, or improperly by turning it off, and as I'm not wanting to take the time for it to reboot at the moment, I'm not using the camera. (The iPod doesn't do that, however.)

Yeah, ok, I'm really posting because I'm in the midst of writng a Tpop column (on Osamu Tezuka, this time) and am finding all sorts of ways to distract myself. But my toe still might be broken.

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What or who is Osamu Tezuka? o_o

Oh.. and poor toe! ;_; *hugs*

Osamu Tezuka is the

God of Manga

(that's the title the Japanese give him - manga no kamisama)

He's the biggest influence in shaping manga as we know it today. :D

Oooooh... I see! Are there some titular titles that can be credited to him?

I shall direct you to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Tezuka) and TezukaInEnglish (http://tezukainenglish.com/?q=node/16) for that. :D

He wrote 700 stories and 170,000 pages of manga during his lifetime - in the 1980s was turning out 300 pages a month. O.o

o_o Holy cow.

Yup.

I've referred to him a couple of times in previous columns and figured that I maybe oughta devote one to him so that poeple will have an idea of who he was and how influential he became.

*nod nods!* Quite cool. Thanks, hon!

Have you actually read any manga by Tezuka? If so, how was it?

I have not, unfortunately, because the classic Tezuka art style is an art style that bugs the hell out of me. :D

I really ought to, though. I know Buddha is being published in English right now. I'm not sure Phoenix is in print in English right now, but then again I probably don't have the budget for it - he worked on it from the early 60s until he died and it's still unfinished (he considered it his masterwork).

Haha, I don't feel so bad now. We watched Metropolis years ago and I hated every minutes. I have seen some of the scans from his animal stories (Unico, Jungle Emperor Leo) and the art is much more tolerable in those.

If I can beleive the stuff I'm going through on Wikipedia, the anime and the manga of Metropolis aren't that much alike - the anime is based mroe heavily on the silent movie. Apparnetly Tezuka hand't seen teh movie and was instead inspired by the poster. (That's not referenced, though, so take it with a grain of salt. I'm unsure because Tezuka was a movie freak and saw as many as he could growing up.)

Yeah he saw a ton of movies so I highly doubt that. My friend wants me to watch the silent movie but I decline because I am afraid it will be like his Metropolis. Honetly the movie wasn't bad, for everyone. It just happened to be one of those you either love it or hate it ones.

Oh, god, the silent movie bored me silly! The anime movie was better --partly in that at various points it disappointed and irritated me, and thus didn't bore me-- but by no means good.

While I'm bashing anime movies that turned out to be disappointing, let me also mention Steamboy, but at least for that I had seen

rachelmanija's warning that it sucked.

I'm worried about the Ghibli version of Earthsea. Maybe if I pretend it has nothing to do with the books I'll enjoy it.... Actually, if is still playing in the middle of October, not understanding what people are saying might do the trick. I wonder if I can ~~trick~~ talk my brother into watching it with me on our family visit to Japan....

Ugh, I am sad to hear that, but I will not be talked into seeing it now. The anime version bored me silly!
I'm not so worried about the Gedo Senki. Even if it isn't a 100% faithful adaption it'll be pretty. I never had a problem with the differences between anime Howl and movie Howl so I think this will be similar. But then I only read the books recently and didn't grow up with them, so that may make all the difference. I still don't understand why they didn't pick the first book because it had kids, magic, dragons and is probably much more adaptable then the The Farthest Shore.

...I don't suppose you remember where you saw the Unico scans? I've got bootlegged versions of all of the anime, but I've been looking for the manga for about a million years.

(Unico was my first anime; I saw it when I was tiny, and I suspect it's been surreptitiously in control of my literary and artistic tastes ever since.)

It was one of my first as well. I always thought the fight between Unico and the baron was really exciting! (And got annoyed when other cartoons didn't do that.) I have never seen a subtitled version though.
Unfortunatly I don't remember where I saw the manga. It was just a website probably from around 1997. It wasn't a complete collection/scanlation of the manga so much as a couple of scans talking about it. I remember something about translating Unico as female instead of male but that is it. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

I'm pretty sure I flipped through Phoenix and didn't like it enough to buy it. A quick amazon search shows that the manga I would read - Unico and Princess Knight are either not available or ungodly expensive.

I've read the first (published in English) volume of Astro Boy; it was cute but too kiddie to make me want to pick up another volume (and Astro Boy's not that emotionally riveting a protagonist). It did have some golden WTFery, like Astro Boy firing explosive rockets out of his butt. And the angsty subplot about the collie dog whose brain is surgically removed and installed into a walking/talking/thinking robot soldier body as part of an evil plot to take over the moon, and the new cyborg doesn't remember he was a dog but is haunted by his doggy past nonetheless, until Astro Boy helps him remember by showing him the tanned skin of the collie he used to be. After that the collie-cyborg has a tearful reunion with his old human master, defects from the robot army and helps Astro Boy save the moon, decides he wants to be a dog again because complex human thought and morality are too painful, and lives happily ever after in a new cyborg collie body with his old skin sewed on.

I am not making any of this up.

That explains so much!

Cyborg collie, meet giant robot chicken.

You so need to watch Avatar and meet the friendly neighborhood giant flying bison.

I have met the giant flying bison! I think I've seen the first four to six episodes, then one random one from later on. I left off when they had broken into the old airbender place with all the big statues and a great wind whooshed arrow-head-boy up into the air.

Oh yeah! That's episode 3 of season 1. The series is on episode 14 / season 2 now (cumulative episode 34). Clearly I need to burn you discs!

In season 2, you will get to meet the giant librarian owl, who is the bestest librarian who is a giant owl ever. (Also Toph, of my icons, and other new members of the Awesome Avatar Ladies Club.)

The delightfully WTF creatures of Avatar. (OMG turtleduck ♥!)

But does it have a bonnet, like the small floating research librarian chickens in Yami no Matsuei?

By the way, you were so right about To Love and Be Wise. I just wrote it up.

Well. No. But he is an all-knowing spirit being! Who can talk! And says things like, "If you're going to lie to an all-knowing spirit being, you should at least put some effort into it."

My love for To Love and Be Wise is proof that I loved shoujo manga long before I knew what shoujo manga was. Also I have a giant literary crush on Grant.

Then again, whooshy and statues could be episode 1.07 too. Lots of statues in this series! Lots of whooshing!

.....have a femmeslash icon!

I think it was episode 7.

But imagine Astro Boy written and drawn by suspense/thriller master Naoki Urasawa! Wouldn't it be awesome? Based on the sample someone posted on scans_daily, if, say, VIZ ever licenses PLUTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_%28manga%29), I will probably fall down and froth at the mouth in joy.

I have seen maybe 2.5 pages of PLUTO (did I mention I was like 20 volumes behind in scanlations of EVERYTHING?) and already I will fall down frothing WITH you.

Hmms. Do you know when the column is going to post? I'm not a huge fan or anything, but I grew up with Unico and there are not so many people out there who remember it.

Sorry about your toe, not much the doctors can do about it either. I would definitely be whining to my mother as well. Apparently it is a bad foot week because I did something to my toe (The nail is all black and looks like it'll fall off.) but at least it's not broken.

I have no clue as to when any column gets posted. It seems to get posted when it's posted.

Foot problems and pregnancies seem to be floating around the internet right now.

Oooh, Osama Tezuka! I talked about him quite a bit when I had to do a presentation on manga for the junior school. Can't wait to see your article! (Tpop = tokyopop?)

*sends lots of plushie Mello and Sanzo for your (broken)toe*

Yeah, Tpop=Tokyopop. :)

My toe thanks you.

Did you know that TezukaInEnglish is my housemate Thrud's website?

If you are ever in need of any Tezuka biographical data, raw manga, raw (and some subbed) anime, merchandising, whatever, we have it. We have more than one hundred separate series by the man in the house at the moment.

Thrud is in the process of liaising with Tezuka Productions to create an official English-language online Tezuka store.

Personally, I can kind of take him or leave him, but I'm really looking forward to reading it when she gets around to writing the book on him she wants to write.

And I proofread bits of the website.

Oh, really? Sweet! I recommended it as a Further Reading site in the column, although I don't know if Matt will edit out that section or keep it in. XD

It was wonderfully handy. I also used the Flash biography on the Tezuka Productions website, and hope that they're reasonably accurate. I may be calling upon y'all in teh future, then...

The Tezuka Productions website is very accurate but extremely poorly curated-- they never update, their index is for shit, and they seem to be aiming to call everything by three separate and unrelated titles. But for biographical data, you're almost certainly totally fine. XD

And yeah, call on us anytime. The difficulty with Thrud and Tezuka is getting her to *stop* being informative. I mean, I do not read Tezuka (particularly-- some of it has happened by osmosis) and I just told you off the top of my head stuff about how the Tezuka website works...

She's convinced me that his writing is in fact probably the coolest thing ever to happen to manga, but no power in the universe seems to be able to make me like the art. Every so often I'll run across something that's a stylistic aberration, and I tend to like those.

Oh, good. :D Heh. I ahvne't actually read any, but I don't like the art style much. I should probably pick up soemthing, just to ahve done so.

...And I totally think I wrote that elsewhere in the comments.

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hrm

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God of Manga

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I could so go for a plushie flying bison (AKA Appa)

Re: I could so go for a plushie flying bison (AKA Appa)

Re: I could so go for a plushie flying bison (AKA Appa)

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