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And now, my quick review of Rumble Pak!
Eh.
No, I ahve no idea why Sakura Pakk gets two k's and Rumble Pak only gets one. Maybe it's supposed to be the X chromosome.
Rumble Pak
Four stories with a shounen bent.
"Bleed Episode 1" - Seems to be a preview for a regular comic, instead of a continuing series, but I could be wrong. Giant outer-space robots, alien retrieval teams, yeah yeah yeah. (Sorry; I'm just not the audience for this sort of thing. You may be.) It's a Filipino creative team, which is interesting. Other than the type of story ... well, very nice. Great art (it's a color one, reproduced here in black and white. Probably nicer in color :), the dialogue is nice, except for an unfortunate break or two between speech bubbles that looks awkward, and the small adorable child has not yet become annoying. That may change later in the series; hopefully not. And yes, I laughed when she decided to take the giant war-robot home with her. I'd ahve to see a few more episodes and see how the characters developed before deciding to read it or not, though, because of that whole giant-fighting-robot thing.
"Your Half" - Well, there's a few things about the art that bug me, like the receding-chin-cheek-pulled-too-far-to-the-side style on the 3/4 views that DRIVES ME UP THE WALL. And one of girls' way pouty lip is a bit off-putting to me because I keep thinking there's a yellowjacket problem in the house. Detailed backgrounds, and the layout is a bit too crowded at times, and the perspective is off a bit here and there. The story seems to be about giant robots and gravity-defying breasts, so typical shounen. Not a whole lot of character development, and there's a lot of unanswered questions as to who these people are and why they're doing what they're doing - this really reads like a one-off humorous episode in the middle of a series and it would probably benefit from knowing who these characters were and what's going on overall.
I ought to do a page count and see if some of these were originally created for the Rising Stars of Manga contest.
"The Monkey Tale" - This one's getting its own grapic novel soon. Fairly nice art, still some anatomy quibbles - the main character's head is deformed and proportions are off just a bit *too* much in the very first splash page, which should be a page you take the time to nail. SOme very nice backgrounds, but they tend to come too late in the scene - the establishing shots ned to come earlier on, so we can have a picture in our minds of where the cahracters are. There's a few typos that I hope get fixed before it gets printed in the graphic novel.[1] The story is shaping up to be the "guy from our world brought into a fantasy world to save it from some evil doom" one, and unfortunately I don't care enough about any of the characters to give a damn. That and not placing establishing shots early enough are its main problems.
"Short Trip" - The mangaka admits he's heavily influenced by Akira Toriyama's (DRAGONBALL) style, but it's so close to his style that all it does is make me see how poor an imitation it is. Which is probably harsher than it deserves, but the linework needs a bit more confidence and some variation in line weight. Good backgrounds, though. Nice layout, though the characters' heads tend to go up and down in size a bit. I think I enjoyed this the most - it's pure Toriyama in style and story, but that's not all bad.
So, overall Rumble Pak is the stronger of the two anthologies. I wish it had more stories in it, but I'll take fewer stories if they're good ones. I'm still not sure I'll pick it up on a regular basis, because none of the stories left me wanting to know more, like the two good ones in Sakura Pakk did.
[1] Yes I'm aware of my lousy typing and I'm too damn lazy to correct the ones I didn't catch the first time (yes, it starts out *much* worse) OH THE IRONY!!
Eh.
No, I ahve no idea why Sakura Pakk gets two k's and Rumble Pak only gets one. Maybe it's supposed to be the X chromosome.
Rumble Pak
Four stories with a shounen bent.
"Bleed Episode 1" - Seems to be a preview for a regular comic, instead of a continuing series, but I could be wrong. Giant outer-space robots, alien retrieval teams, yeah yeah yeah. (Sorry; I'm just not the audience for this sort of thing. You may be.) It's a Filipino creative team, which is interesting. Other than the type of story ... well, very nice. Great art (it's a color one, reproduced here in black and white. Probably nicer in color :), the dialogue is nice, except for an unfortunate break or two between speech bubbles that looks awkward, and the small adorable child has not yet become annoying. That may change later in the series; hopefully not. And yes, I laughed when she decided to take the giant war-robot home with her. I'd ahve to see a few more episodes and see how the characters developed before deciding to read it or not, though, because of that whole giant-fighting-robot thing.
"Your Half" - Well, there's a few things about the art that bug me, like the receding-chin-cheek-pulled-too-far-to-the-side style on the 3/4 views that DRIVES ME UP THE WALL. And one of girls' way pouty lip is a bit off-putting to me because I keep thinking there's a yellowjacket problem in the house. Detailed backgrounds, and the layout is a bit too crowded at times, and the perspective is off a bit here and there. The story seems to be about giant robots and gravity-defying breasts, so typical shounen. Not a whole lot of character development, and there's a lot of unanswered questions as to who these people are and why they're doing what they're doing - this really reads like a one-off humorous episode in the middle of a series and it would probably benefit from knowing who these characters were and what's going on overall.
I ought to do a page count and see if some of these were originally created for the Rising Stars of Manga contest.
"The Monkey Tale" - This one's getting its own grapic novel soon. Fairly nice art, still some anatomy quibbles - the main character's head is deformed and proportions are off just a bit *too* much in the very first splash page, which should be a page you take the time to nail. SOme very nice backgrounds, but they tend to come too late in the scene - the establishing shots ned to come earlier on, so we can have a picture in our minds of where the cahracters are. There's a few typos that I hope get fixed before it gets printed in the graphic novel.[1] The story is shaping up to be the "guy from our world brought into a fantasy world to save it from some evil doom" one, and unfortunately I don't care enough about any of the characters to give a damn. That and not placing establishing shots early enough are its main problems.
"Short Trip" - The mangaka admits he's heavily influenced by Akira Toriyama's (DRAGONBALL) style, but it's so close to his style that all it does is make me see how poor an imitation it is. Which is probably harsher than it deserves, but the linework needs a bit more confidence and some variation in line weight. Good backgrounds, though. Nice layout, though the characters' heads tend to go up and down in size a bit. I think I enjoyed this the most - it's pure Toriyama in style and story, but that's not all bad.
So, overall Rumble Pak is the stronger of the two anthologies. I wish it had more stories in it, but I'll take fewer stories if they're good ones. I'm still not sure I'll pick it up on a regular basis, because none of the stories left me wanting to know more, like the two good ones in Sakura Pakk did.
[1] Yes I'm aware of my lousy typing and I'm too damn lazy to correct the ones I didn't catch the first time (yes, it starts out *much* worse) OH THE IRONY!!
no subject
This kind of thing is fascinating. Do you think you might have time or interest for talking about what works well in a page of Fruits Basket or Saiyuki or something?
I hope that doesn't come off as too entitled or intrusive. I'm here for whatever you want to talk about. I'd just love to have a better idea about what works in art that does work, because I have no knowledge of any of this at all.
no subject
I'll also have to figure out how to explain what "confidence in your linework" means. It's one of those things that you can point to and say "See! He needs more confidence!" but if pressed to explain, I just sputter "He ... he just does! Can't you see?!" I should probably slap a page of Toriyama's up next to one of this guy's since that'll be much easier to see the differences since the styles are so similar.
(You know, I heartily dislike the kind of manga that Toriyama does. But he's so good in telling the story through art and characters that ... I can't help but kinda like his stuff.)