Tag: manga

My First Blog Deserves to be Forgotten

TiberiusLeave a comment

Granted, I’ve grown since, but still

A while ago before stepping off for my new adventures in the Army, I mentioned briefly that I had a blog on Google’s Blogger that ran continuously from February to August of 2021 until a break due to that first attempt at Army life. The summary I made in that little speedrun was that it was crap and should be forgotten at all costs, but in a show of reverse psychology, it’s got me going back to it if only for the sake of this post, and then it’ll be forgotten forever more like the Macarena from the 1990s.

Channel: LosDelRioVEVO

Feeling your age yet, gramps? Well, move aside, we’re peers now.

The origins of the blog were born from a time of both desperation and interest. I had graduated during the emotionally charged year of 2020, a.k.a. the Second Long Hot Summer (after 1967’s many race riots), a.k.a. The Pandemic/COVID-19 Era, a.k.a.; I’ll stop with the references now, I don’t wanna remember that year either.

I may have mentioned it before, but during that year right after I graduated from college and some change during the protests or riots depending on who you were talking to, I decided to phone up an Army National Guard recruiter. Here’s one of the first problems I ran into here: the waiting. Being in the Army now, I understand the concept of “Hurry Up and Wait,” but a civilian attempting to understand the concept with no other point of reference would be left watching and waiting for something amazing to happen.

For reasons that make sense only to recruiters and journalists who focus on the military, the reason for the wait time — at least for recruiting — has to deal with bureaucracy. A bunch of moving parts are considered before a candidate is moved onto the next step, and yes this does include fitness and health. Decades ago, you could be very physically fit with the body of the next super-soldier but unable to join because you had asthma at five. The standards have been reduced since at least 2004 in that specific case, but asthma and other life-altering maladies do require a waiver… which was what kept me from signing the paper and shipping out the same day.

My medical history was far from perfect, but then again, so were a lot of people going into support roles in the Army. Also, before this, there were loads of (now outdated, but still relevant) statistics on obesity rates in the U.S., so how different was I from the average potential recruit?

Still, I was determined to at least try for the Guard that year, but with all that was going on, including my city refusing to let anyone go outside save for emergencies, and there was no chance in hell I was gonna get into the National Guard that year. I didn’t even have faith in my pulmonary functions test until my doctor rang me up and said it was positive.

And I was ecstatic! The one malady that kept me down all my life had been defeated! But by this point I was so disappointed in the recruiting that I tried looking at getting a work in my college major: writing and literature. Impossible? Or just very difficult? Well, up until that point I was so tunnel-visioned that when it came to writing, my original goal of getting published blinded me to other possibilities, both in becoming a published author and wherever else writers could flex their skills.

The difference between traditional or even self-publishing was the barrier to entry. More experienced writers can give me different stories based on their own experience, but being a poor kid with a lot of dreams, the route of manuscript to editor to agent to publisher was more a matter of money than time. I could definitely wait on this; it took me ten years to get the damn thing published. Side note: if you’re wondering why I didn’t like waiting for the recruiter, but had more patience for the manuscript it was because I was more involved with the manuscript considering I was writing it while the National Guard recruiter was more a luck of the draw. I was dying to beat the odds on this one. Part of the reason I wanted to go NG before throwing all my chips in active was to use the cash there to fund this hobby and eventually use the benefits for a VA home loan. Biased opinion or not, I firmly believe a two-bedroom, one bathroom apartment is not where a family should be raised.

That excursion with the NG recruiter lasted from August to November of 2020. Between the last correspondence with the guy and the beginning of the first blog, I contemplated learning new skills with the Job Corps, but I blew them off for a bunch of personal reasons, the biggest one being my immediate area. The nicest way I can put it is that there are swaths of the Bronx that remind me of these important lessons from The Boondocks.

Channel: BOKC headhuncho901_

Parodical or not, where I grew up, very few people turned into responsible adults. There were only three things a black or Hispanic (or in my case, both) kid could see in their future: basketball, rap, or drug dealing, a secret fourth outcome, all of these combined. And I wanted more options. The Army would mean saying goodbye to my family to potentially defend the nation from terrorists and/or near-peer adversaries, but I just saw an excuse to see more of the world that I was missing. Remember, poor kid who wants to see the world, but won’t be able to without money for bus, plane, or train tickets.

Writing, on the other hand, was a much slower process that would have me hone my skills for better results, but there’d still be pitfalls all the same. And I’d be ready for what those could look like. That said, more research and patience to know what to expect and possible steps would’ve helped me plenty. Writing is a passion of mine, as these past blogs show. The bull crap I grew up seeing was really tired and really overdone with all these new people showing up in sports and music. Allow me to be the boomer and say that the classics beat these new folks any day.

Tear me off this hill all you want, I’ll never recant this statement!

So yeah, I was concerned about potentially sharing a workspace and probably a dormitory with a bunch of kids who essentially thought the same, spoke the same, and all that. I went to school with people like that; some diversity of thought would be a huge breath of fresh air at least.

I still had my friends from before, but we were all drifting apart over time. Hell, my best friend is a father now, which essentially makes me an uncle. Writing wouldn’t net me any new friends, but it would put some money in my bank account so that I could travel and make friends the old fashioned way.

Or so I thought. Just like this blog, the old one was supposed to be primarily entertainment, but with a larger focus on anime and video games. Somewhere along the way, my time on YouTube bled into the blog posts and s[horse neighing]t went wild. Going off the rails and everything. I’ve been careful to keep my political opinions to myself, but on that other one, it was like watching someone go mad with cabin fever. And this was 2021. We had the vaccine by that point. Maybe the maturity wasn’t there yet. I was only 22 then and at least in this blog, I put some kind of research into my topics instead of just bashing my head on the keyboard like a somehow more inept Invader Zim.

A few months later, I went all in on active duty. I’d spent the last year of high school till that point convincing my mom that the military was a smart decision for me personally, but she had her reasons for imploring me to explore different options, not all of them related to my health. I graduated high school in 2016 at the age of 17. In the U.S. at least, if you’re out of school by 17 and you want to join the military, you need parental consent and my mom was in zero rush to see me in a military uniform at that point. We were also still seeing active combat deployments to Afghanistan and potentially becoming a statistic was completely off the table for her. So it was off to community college for me.

Fast-forward to 2021, and we’re set to leave Afghanistan and transition into a peace-time Army and my mother finally tells me that if I want to I can go active duty Army, so I did. The time between talking with the recruiter literally down the street from me and shipping out was about 3.5 months, enough time for me to scramble my incoherent thoughts in a piss poor blog. I’ve linked to that blog right before I shipped out in January for basic training, but to save you all the trouble, it’s right here again.

Once again, I’d like y’all to be nice. The first attempt is almost always the worst attempt. It’s not like Einstein was born with a brain that big and heavy. Then I started this blog in 2023 after being told by another recruiter that based on my previous performance at Fort Jackson, I wouldn’t have another chance in the Army. But again, my tunnel vision, or rather my determination, kept me from quitting just yet. I’d keep looking for ways to beat the odds.

It still took some doing and a year of mostly sitting at the computer and occasionally jogging wasn’t worth anything. Literally. My folks were wondering why I wouldn’t get even a retail job and my excuse was that even though experience is different from anecdotes, too many retail worker horror stories kept me from taking that plunge. I was desperate for work too, but not that desperate.

A third recruiter bailed on me, leading me to find a remote one on Reddit (beating the odds once again), and in between then and now 2023 was just me filling up this blog with better though still imperfect content. I know I said that I’d like that first blog to be forgotten for good, but as an archive of how I used to think and feel about XYZ, it’s good to have something to remind me of how not to do something. Yay!

I know it’s a month divisible by 2, but this time I wanna try something different. No recommendation this time, but next time I want to see if I can make biweekly recommendations at least until June to get everything back on track. My notes from before still have old dates written on them and they’re pretty much invalid. Once that’s cleared up, then I’m good to give you another YouTuber to eye. Gonna step out into the wider world next time.

Farewell, Akira Toriyama

Tiberius1 Comment

A tribute to a legendary mangaka

I had been in Army basic training from January ’til the ides of March, so I didn’t learn of Akira Toriyama’s passing until a couple weeks after it had happened. Of course, everybody would’ve gotten their honors and tributes out to the late author by then so my words are coming later than normal, but I’d still like to remember and recount some of his work.

My introduction to his magnum opus was similar to a lot of kids in the early 2000s. There wasn’t a distinction between anime and regular cartoons back then, so anime fans young and old accepted them with open arms as more cartoons to watch every Saturday morning, further bolstered by programming blocks like 4KidsTV. Seeing a golden legacy ahead of them, many notable programming blocks acquired the rights to air anime in the west. No doubt you or someone you know remembers the ham-fisted attempts at censorship or cultural adjustments because “no westerner has ever heard of rice balls,” or “think of the kids when depicting cigarettes.”

Obviously, Dragon Ball was no different when it came to censorship. Swearing (however slight) was edited out, scenes were edited or cut, and numerous references from the original Japanese were lost in translation due to how tough it was back then to research a lot of the cultural and historical references considering Dragon Ball’s source material is the Chinese classic Journey to the West. This video can better explain the history of censorship in the Dragon Ball franchise.

Credit: Nerdstalgic

Nevertheless, Dragon Ball or more popularly it’s better known successor Dragon Ball Z gained the lion’s share of the fame in the west, albeit with a much wider reception in Latin America. Once Toriyama’s crazy diamond got an English dub, there was nowhere else to go but up.

My DBZ collection of media was a bit more miniscule compared to my Naruto diet, but it was still fairly noticeable. A few puzzle and DS games, the console fighting games, memes and image macros, fan-made projects featuring some of the characters or the whole cast; an entire production company based in Texas has Toriyama to thank for their success, and they started as a series of parodies.

In 2008, Team Four Star blessed us with an abridged parodical take on Dragon Ball Z, movies included. Covering the original major sagas, they rewrote and jokingly recontextualized all of DBZ over the course of a decade on YouTube and on their own website.

Other programming blocks like Toonami, have also owed their success to Toriyama’s star franchise. They began with re-runs back in the summer of 1998, but even so, the English cast never left the project. For decades now, VAs like Sean Schemmel, Christopher Sabat, and Kyle Hebert have gotten their recognition from the English dub and have since lent their talents to other anime ever since. I think it’s safe to say that Dragon Ball has been the connecting element to a lot of media worldwide. You could trip on a Dragon Ball reference and it doesn’t even need to be animated.

Credit: iiAFX

But Toriyama was more than just the creator of a manga inspired by Chinese literature. Away from his studio, he worked on other series like Dr. Slump and video games like Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. His distinctive art style has even been emulated by his fans over the years. Sites that are hubs for artists, classical and digital alike, are guaranteed to have some attempt at drawing at least one character. Even professional artists and other mangaka have redrawn entire scenes or individual characters, either while working with Toriyama or to honor him in his lifetime. Some of these other mangaka grew up watching or reading his work too.

What makes Toriyama’s passing especially sad is that, like Kentaro Miura before him, he also left behind unfinished work. Miura never finished Berserk after two decades plus and it felt as if even though Goku’s original story had concluded so long ago, there was a lot of fun to have with the Z fighters, especially with all the video games, references, and spin-offs that have come out ever since. The direction of the Dragon Ball Super manga and the newest installment in the franchise, DAIMA, are likely going to be put on hold for a while until an announcement is made.

Whatever the case, Dragon Ball fans, numerous anime fans, artists and many more have paid their tributes to a prolific and influential artist since his passing. This post is one of them having found out so late and being away from technology during training. And on that note, the block that was made famous for airing and helping perpetuate the Dragon Ball series also made a tribute complete with a marathon in his honor.

Credit: Toonami

Farewell, Akira Toriyama [1955-2024]

An Important Announcement and a Desired Topics Any% Speedrun

Tiberius4 Comments

Nearing the corner on a new year

Since I started writing this blog in January, I expected and prepared for real life to momentarily take me away from the blog for a time. We’re approaching that milestone. Originally, I had attempted to sign up for a volunteer program with AmeriCorps in the Southwest. Moments before clearing the hurdle, however, technical issues held me back and I’d missed the June deadline. This wouldn’t be the first time real life interfered with this weekly blog and I doubt it’ll be the last. Life is like that sometimes; you can lead a horse to water.

This time around, I’d pursued a different endeavor, one that lasted from the latter half of the summer until now. I’d mentioned in blogs before that I had little experience in the Army. To elaborate on that journey, it had been a long time coming. I wanted to join ever since I graduated high school in 2016, even in a reserve capacity which my mom would’ve expected me to do at the time. I was 17 when I graduated and if I wanted to move forward I’d need parental approval. We were also still seeing deployments to Afghanistan at the time and the potential of me going on such a deployment mostly torpedoed any argument I had at joining before I was 18. Not even a list of non-combat deployments would be able to sway her. Like most people, they hear “Army” and immediately think “infantry, cannons, tanks, helicopters.”

Don’t get me wrong, that’s all cool. But from what I’ve seen and read about from films to movies to video games like Call of Duty, the cool guy stuff tends to be limited to combat branches like Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry, etc. For specific missions like those of modern Call of Duty and Battlefield games, if you pay close attention you’ll notice that the units mentioned are Special Forces groups. Delta Force, SEAL Teams, Marine Spec Ops, Air Force Pararescue; units whose training alone demands extra mental fortitude and fitness that I’ve known all my life was impossible for me to achieve. Which was why when I looked for specialties on the goarmy.com website, I looked at support specialties.

Specifically, the Signal Corps where soldiers in this field potentially work on or with networking, telecommunications, satellites, computers, and anything else that kept technical and electrical systems up and running. Nevertheless, my mom thought I should try college first, but I never stopped eyeing the Army. In case you’re curious why the Army specifically, the Marines took everything a bit too seriously, my family in general has an influx of ex-sailors, and the Air Force practices camouflage a little too well. Not to mention the Army recruiting office was right down the street from my home. It was easier to find the Army guys than anyone else.

My first attempt was in 2020, deep into the pandemic. My original goal was to serve close to home (National Guard), and make use of VA home loans to nab a house and a car. That’s still part of my goals, though I’ve had more time to do research on what that looks like. I don’t crap cash so something new is off the table for me. I’d been looking at cars known for their reliability and durability than their ability to show me what I look like in the light.

Never mind the fact that the pandemic made everything difficult, I was determined and sure enough I’d gotten to the recruiter. After a few snags, we were getting to what I’d discover would be the first round of paperwork. The recruiter and I discussed my health in private. Growing up, I had asthma trouble and it would’ve kept me indoors. Conversely, I liked going out and running around as a kid, so asthma attacks were so rare, I can only ever point to one in my life and it’s far before the U.S. military’s cut off of age seven. Didn’t stop doctors from prescribing medicines unnecessarily as a safety precaution. By the time I was turning 22, the asthma was so diminished I didn’t really need anything.

I took a pulmonary function test soon after and I was certain I had failed it, but the doctor who referred me told me I’d pass and if I still wanted to, I could go forward with the National Guard. After all, the most I’d done with them was take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery or ASVAB, a series of tests that determine your strengths and weaknesses. No disrespect to the National Guard, but COVID slowed a lot of things to a crawl, recruitment being one of them. It worked out for me though, I’d waited long enough to get vaccinated in Spring 2021 and by then I was talking to an active duty recruiter.

We talked about my health again, but surprisingly, the asthma wasn’t as strong a focus this time around. I wear glasses and the recruiters saw fit to put in a vision waiver because of a lazy eye. This pushed my ship out date to two months that year and I was gone by the evening of August 9. My preparation for basic training was subpar as seen by my amazing ability to run at the speed of a continental drift. I was also nursing a leg injury and going back and forth to the docs there to get told to do some stupid band exercises wasn’t helping. They did give me pills to eat after each meal, but I don’t like the idea of popping to keep up the pace, not to mention one of them came with a blood thinning side effect.

So in my infinite wisdom, I thought it’d be easier to leave and come back. Well, that would be all wrong. I spent all of 2022 and the first half of 2023 trying to get back into the Army. And the real kicker was that the last IRL recruiter I talked to was the one to get me in the first time two years ago. Fortunately, there’s r/Army on reddit, not administered by the Army themselves, but administered by individuals who are or did serve in the Army. I’m not sure if the Army themselves approved it’s creation, but I’m not discounting it since every business has a social media page of some kind these days.

One of the soldiers I’d been messaging is an active duty recruiter who has a record of helping people enlist even from out of their home state. Now this isn’t exactly a one-off. It’s 100% possible to get aid from a recruiter in, say, Tennessee, even though you live in Wisconsin. On the Army’s side, every recruiter can go through an applicant’s paperwork and help push it forward, especially if the entrant suspects that a recruiter isn’t following through on their duties.

Like last time, it was a series of electronically signing papers and using the power of lucky charms, crossed fingers, and the hands of time to get my waiver approved. By October of this year, I was given the greenlight from my recruiter and the sun started shining brighter that day.

The next hard part was getting a recruiter in my immediate area to taxi me to the processing station to choose my military occupational specialty or MOS. Three games of musical phones later, we get a date for the second week of November and I sign for an MOS that would potentially see me working on telecommunications with a secret security clearance. The important thing to know about secret and top secret security clearances is that they allow those with access to sensitive information. It can’t be shared, reproduced, or tampered with without appropriate authorization. Doing so brings forth dire consequences. If you don’t f[horse noises]k around, you won’t find out. No one wants to share the same fate as Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira.

No one can stress hard enough how crucial it is that you follow this like a mantra. No one would dare show the likeness of the prophet Muhammad, and no one should do anything with sensitive information that they’re not supposed to.

As of writing this, my ship out date is January 2. I’ll swear in and ship out that day. Last time I was at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I might go there again to train, but other entrants in a similar MOS as me are slated to train at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. It might be related to the weather since I was at Jackson in the summer and it’s currently winter, but I’ll know for certain on the day of.

Doing the math, the timeline should have me in training from January 2 to around the second or third week of March, then to train specifically for my MOS, it’s 19 weeks so I should be done with that by July. This means that this blog will be dark until I can find a way to access it in the summer and depending on my first duty station, I’ll either have the free time to continue this though with less frequency, or not at all.

I have a lot of stuff I’d still like to talk about and I want to try to speed through them here before it goes dark proper. I plan on fully elaborating on these at some point, but I can’t say when or if I’ll get that chance. So here’s a brief on three projected topics I won’t get to discuss further.

My First Blog Should Be Forgotten

This blog is actually my second. The first I launched on blogger in February 2021 and ran until my ship out date in August that year, plus another two or so posts in October and December. It was originally supposed to be animanga focused and serve as a launch pad for a side gig on Fiverr.

I wasn’t all that lucky however and it became more of a hobby where I can improve my writing without feeling locked to the commitment of a novel. As time went on, I involved several of my political views which don’t have a place in an entertainment-focused blog and looking back I don’t like how I worded a lot of things. I’d like for it to fade into obscurity but bringing it here will yield the curious. For those of you who’d like to skim through the muck, I’ll leave a link below so you can see what 22-year-old me thought was a stellar blog. Please be nice.

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/4013701638792928337?bpli=1&pli=1

Stumbling Blind into Btooom!

As a viewer of the Trash Taste podcast, I’m aware of how clear the hosts are on certain genres. Joey Bizinger can’t stand most isekai anime while Gigguk wolves them down like Mars bars. If I could use them as a scale, I’d be a couple notches Gigguk-ward. I’ll watch a few isekai, but it’s not a genre I’ll make a beeline for. Sometimes I investigate things on a whim and that’s how I managed to find all 12 episodes of the Btooom! anime on YouTube, concealed and unlisted so the algorithm has to work hard to find and delete it.

It might not call itself isekai, but to me it fits the criteria, though I’m using The Rising of the Shield Hero, KonoSuba, and Re:Zero as my measuring sticks. The protagonist is a NEET named Ryota Sakamoto who excels in an online video game where instead of guns, players fight each other with different types of explosives.

As of writing, I’m only two episodes deep into this 1-cour anime, so my assessment of it as an isekai anime may not be completely accurate. It has one hallmark of an isekai that of seen so far, though instead of the lone NEET heading to a fantasy world, multiple people are present from the real world. Then again, Sword Art Online did something similar and both received their anime adaptations in 2012. The Btooom! anime only ran for 12 episodes while SAO became a franchise in and of itself.

In only two episodes of Btoom!, it appears to be a darker series. My memories of SAO are hazy as I haven’t seen it in years, but I remember the golden rule being that death in-game means actual death for the player. In the first two episodes that I saw of Btooom!, Sakamoto lived up to the reputation of most incels while in the next episode, the girl, Himiko, was sexually assaulted by fat nerd. Junya Inoue wasn’t pulling any punches with the writing it seems. As much as I want to write about this anime, I haven’t seen enough of it to throw my hat into the ring, nor have I any memories of SAO to make a good enough comparison.

However much free time I’ll get in Advanced Individual Training will determine if I can use what’s left to play catch-ups with either series, but at least there’ll be enough time for me to absorb what I’m gonna see soon.

That Manga about Robert Johnson

Of the YouTubers I’ve discovered, one called NFKRZ — real name Roman — released a video sometime last month or so about how he took Chinese and practiced enough of it to become fluent. Under the comments of that video, some made a joke about globalization. As hilarious as the next YouTube comment, but a more serious and more interesting case of globalization to me is less on someone learning a notoriously difficult language and more on the manga artist who decided to illustrate the life of early 20th century blues musician Robert Johnson.

There’s a manga for everyone.

I stumbled upon the manga whilst reading a Looper article on unsung and underrated manga and the manga in question takes the name of one of the musician’s posthumous albums: Me and the Devil Blues. Like Btooom!, I’m also early in this series, but from what I’ve read so far it appears to be an apocryphal retelling of how a black man from Mississippi became a legendary blues musician and pioneer. I say apocryphal because the focal point seems to be a legend.

When Johnson was growing up (mid 1910s to late 1920s), adherence to religion, especially in Mississippi — a Bible belt state — was societally enforced as opposed to legislatively enforced. No matter your color or creed, you were assumed or expected to be a churchgoer, even if you didn’t give a damn about what the preacher had to say. Somehow, someway, the Bible made its way into ordinary people’s lives and in the case of the manga, it’s marketed as a devil’s contract/monkey’s paw sort of deal. You get talent in exchange for your mortal soul [evil laughter].

I hesitate to call the rest of it a spoiler. You can’t really spoil history, but I want to implore readers to check out the manga. It’s only five volumes, so you can knock it out in a few days or a week at most. It’s available for reading on MangaDex. I have no idea where to find physical copies, but if you do and you want to read more about one of the 20th century’s earliest blues pioneers and 27 club inductees, I can’t recommend it enough. I’d certainly love to read more of it myself and give a more expansive opinion. Akira Hiramoto’s manga deserves it, so does this sadly forgotten musician.

Those are three of the topics I had lined up for 2024. They all will soon get their own more in depth blog posts in the future, ideally in the summer, but this is subject to change. My job in the Army will take precedence over this blog for 2024, but I’m glad I could get something off the ground this year and with a small but growing following of readers. Glad to have had some people checking out this… admittedly poorly named blog site. Fingers crossed 2024 doesn’t keep me too far away from this.

Boruto: TBV Chapter 5

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Extra details about the divine tree

Part of what the Boruto fandom has been asking for for a few months now has been a flashback of sorts to some training between Boruto and Sasuke during the timeskip. If it’s an arc they’re looking for, it remains to be seen if that’ll be honored, but the closest we’ve got is the opening pages of chapter 5, released a few hours ago. Last time on Two Blue Vortex, Boruto displayed his prowess as the third ever shinobi in history to learn and use the Flying Raijin Technique.

Using the technique, he traveled to the Ten Tails’ dimension, but discovered that it was gone from its restraints and he and Code were surrounded by four intelligent claw grime humanoids. Boruto expected to twist Code’s arm into a truce, but the deceitful Ohtsutsuki hopeful nearly left him to die. Guided by a mechanical summoning toad, Boruto escaped to safety and towards a few familiar faces: one long thought defeated and one in a coma.

This month’s chapter began with a quick flashback. Sasuke initially doubted his memory, repeating that he was doing this for Sarada, not for Boruto, but by the time Boruto had finished his training, he was beginning to imitate the Uchiha patriarch in attire and even hair.

He always did say he wanted to be like Sasuke, even if these straits were forced upon him.

Since debuting in August of 2023, Boruto’s timeskip seems to have delivered on its new threats. The Chekhov’s gun is getting used so often, it might be time to clean the barrel. In this instance, Code’s claw grimes have another sequence to them. The previous four chapters show that whenever they bite someone, the victim of the bite turns into a tree. In chronological order, we’ve had four victims of a claw grime’s bite:

  1. Bug
  2. Sasuke
  3. Unnamed Leaf Shinobi
  4. Moegi

Not only that, a claw grime replica is created in their stead. They inherit the appearance of the host, but maintain the original desires of the Ohtsutsuki, which is to consume enough chakra to bear a fruit-bearing tree, just as it was revealed in the Fourth Shinobi War all those years ago. Good grief, Madara’s influence and meddling still scar the shinobi world after all this time. In this case, the sentient trees have expressed desirable targets of their own:

  1. The unnamed Leaf Jounin clone wants to devour Naruto.
  2. Moegi’s clone wants to hunt Konohamaru.
  3. Sasuke’s clone wants to make a beeline for Sarada.
  4. and the clone of Bug wants to target Eida herself.

Meanwhile, Sumire and Amado discuss Boruto’s return and response to Code’s attack on the Leaf. Amado explains that the Karma acts as a storehouse for one’s DNA and since he’s trying to revive his daughter, Akebi, he needs a Karma seal with her memories to revive her as he remembers. Prior to the Shinjutsu event pre-timeskip, Kawaki would’ve been the only person of interest since Amado remembers implanting that DNA in his Karma.

If it was Kawaki who fled the village after scarring Boruto, and practically orphaning him and Himawari, I could imagine Shikamaru as Hokage dispatching ANBU shinobi teams to track him down if not designating a special unit of the ANBU to handle that, similar to the Hidden Mist’s Tracker Ninja. But post-Shinjutsu event, this doesn’t happen. False memories or not, Amado can tell that he was the one who modified Kawaki’s body as shown in the flashbacks across Boruto Part I, but has no definitive way to prove it. And let’s be real, this is the same universe where the whole village conflated their annoyance with Naruto with their hatred at the Nine Tailed Fox, almost no one being able to tell that he looked just like the Fourth Hokage. I made the connection when he was featured in Ultimate Ninja 3, and that game came out when I was 9 years old. Back then, it was a theory not yet proved fact in the manga.

Thankfully for Amado’s endeavors, Kawaki doesn’t pose any flight risk, so he’s got his target right where he wants him. But as a “son” of a former Hokage, the Leaf government won’t make it easy. Kawaki’s and Boruto’s roles are switched, but Amado’s prior employment in Kara makes him far from trustworthy, especially in Shikamaru’s eyes. And Kawaki’s attitude and history with the scientist pretty much leave that move off the table for Amado. He’ll probably have to get to him when he’s incapacitated. How he’ll get to that point also remains to be seen, but as a scientist, he’s patient enough to observe the results with all the data on hand. Amado’s patience is matched with a Bodhisattva — you think another minute will faze him?

The chapter closes off with Sumire and Sarada discussing what Sumire learned from Amado and a heartfelt reunion between the young Uchiha and the exile.

From what I’ve gathered this chapter, the claw grimes are more dangerous than Code himself. Forgive me for power-scaling, but the grimes are a cut above Code, and the divine trees created from their victims might turn out worse when they get their chance to shine. I do have a flowchart of sorts to showcase the direction of the claw grimes: Claw grime bites human -> human turns into tree -> divine tree clone emerges -> divine tree clone hungers for chakra… and I have to leave it as such until the next chapter launches in January, though for reasons I’ll explain on New Year’s Eve, that may not be feasible for me.

Until then I leave you with some questions for thought: What happens if a divine tree bites a specific person? A Jinchuriki? Someone with vast chakra reserves like Kisame? What else do they inherit from their hosts? And since the divine tree clones aren’t loyal to Code, what happens if they get to him or someone like Eida, who has a Senrigan and access to Shinjutsu? Time will tell, but I hope I’ll be able take notes and write about it all by then.

Before I close off, here’s some wholesome from the latest Two Blue Vortex chapter for the holidays.

My Opinions on Visual Novels

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Lots of engagement? Or hardly any?

I chose the topics for the year many months ago. In the case of visual novels, I didn’t think I’d have a lot to say about them, but when I got one for free this summer on Steam, it initially got me thinking about how I feel about them… for a bit. Then I stopped largely due to my play style. I do get absorbed in video game narratives — I felt compelled by MK: Shaolin Monks enough to try to fix the narrative like a weekly anime a la Dragon Ball — but my play style successfully blends dialogue with button pressing. Mortal Kombat, God of War, Call of Duty, the Naruto games, Midnight Club, Need for Speed; indicting myself here, the action is the selling point.

But I still decided to give that free VN a chance, specifically this one:

The goal of Find Love or Die Trying is to romance one of the five girls on a televised game show not dissimilar from The Bachelor/ette. If you fail to get even one of them to fall for you, you die. So specifically it’s a dating sim game. I recall tuning into DashieGames in the latter part of high school when he was playing that one dating sim puzzle match game HuniePop, where that game’s goal is to score with all the girls.

I know what visual novels are, and there’s a chance you’ve come across some yourself or even their most famous anime adaptations (Fate, Clannad, Danganronpa, etc.), and I was about to say that they’re not for me, but that’s just not true. I just forgot because I have way more memories of being very involved in other video games not limited to the ones listed above. The truth is more that I’m a bit torn on VNs somewhat. I’ve run into several in my childhood, especially on the practically defunct Stickpage, and while not VNs themselves, the Choose Your Own Adventure template of Telltale Games’ video game adaptations of popular properties as well as Don’t Nod Entertainment’s Life is Strange series served as something of an introduction to VNs or something close to a VN.

I still have my copies of Minecraft: Story Mode Seasons 1 and 2, I’ve watched gameplay of Life is Strange 1, Before the Storm, and 2, along with criticisms of each (for more information on LiS, see GCN, Dumbsville, or uricksaladbar on YouTube for more details), and if you’re familiar with games like these you might see the path I’m walking down here. Diet VNs or not, these tended to have more player involvement than something like Doki Doki Literature Club or literally Highschool Romance. Clearly, I’ve got a preference for one type of game over the other, but it’s not like I won’t give a VN the time of day. I did stick around Find Love long enough to reach at least one ending, and a few years ago I watched an old playthrough of The Anime Man playing Highschool Romance; I watched all the endings on his channel. This is what it looks like.

So why are VNs toward the middle of my tier list? Is the limited involvement that it comes with, prioritizing the reading and storytelling over the action? I doubt it… if that were the case I probably wouldn’t have seen the Telltale Games through to the end or bothered watching that Anime Man gameplay of it. I think it’s effort necessary to get through a VN. Don’t get me wrong, I think VNs can tell great stories with the right kind of writing, setup, and characters. The 4chan sponsored VN Katawa Shoujo about romancing girls with disabilities is said to be one such example of amazing storytelling, but I think part of what keeps me from exploring more further has to do with length.

This may sound weird for me since I’ve stuck around some long running anime and have several novels in my possession right now as well as a published novel out available for purchase, but part of the difference between a physical book or a graphic novel or even a webcomic would probably be the visible page count. With the exception of Choose Your Own Adventure, few books or other such media have branching paths. Sometimes what I do when looking at a book in Barnes and Noble or any other bookstore or even with books I own, I count the pages of the chapters. I don’t always have the time to just read for fun and in those instances I count how many pages a chapter has and whether there’s page breaks for me to stop on just in case I need to put it down and divert my attention elsewhere. They’ve become to me what most mobile games are for someone on public transit.

Visual novels on the other hand feel more deceptive. Because so many have branching paths and multiple choices affecting the narrative, a single run could theoretically take moments of your life away, especially if you plan on going back to unlock different endings. This might come from the side of me that wants to experience a lot of things at different moments or it might be something else, but seeing how long some VNs can be can get pretty daunting. I could do it, but seeing the progress bar move at the speed of sleep might motivate me to try another look for speedrun to watch on YouTube or try one myself to juxtapose.

More popular VNs like Fate also notoriously ridiculous launching points. Gigguk took the piss out of this a few years ago with his video on getting into Fate, but it touches on another problem with some VNs: starting point.

Channel: Gigguk

To be fair, I’ve heard from Fate fans that the memes of where to start getting into Fate take it overboard at times, and I like to believe there’s some truth to that, but other times VNs can run on for very long and seemingly have no clear path to walk on. From the outside looking in, they can look like they’re all over the place narratively. I don’t always like taking notes when I’m reading, but a labyrinthine writing style can make that look like a National Guard deployment to an approaching disaster.

I’ve called my own levels of patience into question before, but it looks like I draw the line at really long VNs, though more of a dotted line than a solid one. I could see myself getting into more VNs if I knew where to look for more, and ideally none that are years long or seconds short. The Highschool Romance dating sim gives me an idea and I may go back to Find Love in the future (especially since I started a second run and didn’t finish), but until then I’m probably gonna keep VNs towards the middle of my personal list. I recognize the appeal and I could see myself getting absorbed in them one day, but it’ll take a while for that to happen. For an in-depth look at what a visual novel is and what most of them consist of, see this video from Get in the Robot for more details:

Channel: Get in the Robot

This week’s channel recommendation is Company Man.

https://www.youtube.com/@companyman114

Company Man is a channel dedicated to exploring the businesses and markets that have since become household names in the U.S. and abroad. Restaurant chains, pizzerias, candy companies, grocers, and numerous others. Often in my writing, I’ll make obscure references to famous products or companies and whatnot and I like that Company Man offers a lot of insight on the history and success or sometimes failures of many of the brands we grew up with or heard about. It may not sound as ecstatic or exciting, but I think it’s interesting to explore these different brands.

The Wonders of Golden Kamuy

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A near-perfectly balanced dramady

As both a history buff and a weeb, I like to think that history can work well even in graphic novel form. I’d bring proof, but so many political cartoons and, as mentioned before, graphic novels, have come out that the proof is everywhere you look. Here’s one of my favorite examples:

For the topic of this post (and something more lighthearted), I bring to you the manga series Golden Kamuy.

Created by Satoru Noda, Golden Kamuy is about a former Imperial Japanese soldier and Russo-Japanese war veteran named Saichi Sugimoto. After his military contract expires, Sugimoto hears from an ex-convict about a complicated story involving a legendary convict who hid a large stash of gold from the Ainu people of northern Japan, Hokkaido, and the Kuril Islands. When he was caught, he tattooed a map onto nearly 40 other convicts, each of whom is a specialist in his own right. After this, the prisoners were set to be relocated to another prison in the north of Japan, but the guards were ambushed and the convicts went into hiding. Sugimoto doesn’t buy into the story at first, but when the ex-con reveals that he’s one of the dozens tattooed by the legendary convict, he reveals the tattooist as “Noppera-bo.”

So far, we’ve got some interesting and familiar hooks, don’t we? A retired soldier searching for treasure, interactions with indigenous people groups, a changing political landscape, and slight spoilers for later, competing groups with similar interests. Almost sounds like a western… A story that fantastical would normally disappear into legend until you meet undeniable proof of its existence, but before we delve deeper into that, I want to discuss the historical background on which the manga is based.

Very briefly oversimplifying, Russo-Japanese relations in the early 20th century, the Russian and Japanese empires, both had conflicting interests in East Asia: for Russia, they wanted warm water ports and more land for the Trans-Siberian railway, and for Japan, they wanted to maintain political influence over East Asia, particularly Korea–but so did Russia. War broke out due to these conflicts and Russia maintaining a military presence in Manchuria when the original promise was for them to demobilize.

By 1905, the Theodore Roosevelt administration brokered a peace between the two powers that saw Japan as the victor, gaining the southern half of Sakhalin Island, political influence on the Korean peninsula, while Russia had to abandon its railway plans and its warm water port in Asia, the former of these later becoming Japan’s Southern Manchuria Railway which connected to that warm water port of Port Arthur.

Golden Kamuy is set in the aftermath of this. The fighting is long done away with, but the outside influences do have an impact on the characters. Keep in mind that decades before Japan went to blows with Russia, it was busy organizing itself into a modern country, and its first step was the reorganization of domestic territory into the modern day prefectures, all the while convincing the last of the samurai and feudal lords to surrender their holdings. Many did, but there were still a few holdouts, the most famous of them was the Vice Commander of the Shinsengumi, a hastily organized group of swordsmen with samurai sponsorship: Hijikata Toshizo.

This was all done during the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s. Although Golden Kamuy is decades after that, select characters with strong memories of the pre-Meiji days do still hang around. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the manga takes several liberties with history and some characters’ roles in specific events. Since I bring him up, Hijikata does appear in the manga, and is a part of a few flashback panels, but in the manga he appears as an old man and political prisoner since the Shinsengumi opposed the Meiji government. In real life, Hijikata Toshizo was shot dead on horseback while commanding troops in a major theatre of the Boshin War.

For the rest of the population of Japan, the Japanese government and media these days tend to promote an image of a homogenous populace, but reality is far different than what you’d believe. I briefly brought them up earlier, but the Ainu people are another central piece to the manga. The prisoner called “Noppera-bo” or “No Face” was the one who buried their gold in a hidden location and it takes the help of numerous Ainu peoples to help locate it. The Ainu people typically includes the indigenous groups found often in northern Japan and Hokkaido as mentioned before, but there are similar related groups elsewhere, on Sakhalin and in Russian Manchuria. These include but are not limited to the Uilta/Oroks, the Nivkh, the Nanai, and many more. One of these characters whom Sugimoto meets in Golden Kamuy is a little girl named Asirpa.

Asirpa serves as the audience’s window to an ethnic group that Japan has at best ignored and at worst disrespected. In history, the Yamato people of Japan gradually fought with them even into the Tokugawa Shogunate where they were forcefully relocated to Tohoku and Hokkaido. During the Meiji government in 1899, non-Japanese who were subjects of Japan (including the then-recently added Taiwan and soon to be added Korea) were forced to adopt Japanese names and use those publicly. True to this, even Asirpa has a Japanese name that would have to be used on official documents, as explained in her associated wiki page.

Nevertheless, love and appreciation for Ainu culture is evident and expressed in the Ainu characters, especially Asirpa when she explains language, naming customs, rituals, folk beliefs and several others. The name given to that convict who tattooed the map onto his fellow prisoners, Noppera-bo, is a reference to a Japanese spirit or “yokai.” The yokai come in a wide range of forms and depending on the legend, some are harmless or vicious. The Noppera-bo is described as a harmless yokai that takes the form of a human, only they have no face. Sorta like this:

Though as explained before, it normally takes the shape of a faceless human.

Regarding Ainu customs, the most famous aspect of the series among fans is the cuisine. It’s a common joke to refer to the series as a cooking show, which isn’t exactly inaccurate. Playing dodge bullet with loads of contentious groups is a key point of the series, but when there’s enough Arisaka rifle rounds flying for one scene, the next one transitions to Noda’s briefest possible tutorial on Ainu cooking, like so.

Channel: Crunchyroll Collection

It may seem insignificant plot-wise considering where the story takes our main leads, but funny enough, there’s a healthy hosting of food scenes throughout the series. Noda explained that much of his experience comes from growing up in Hokkaido as an ethnic Japanese. The conceptualization and characterization of the Ainu in particular comes both from his own experiences, which he admitted were limited and from research, which there’s a lot of.

The characters as a whole are all varied more so in personality than in ethnic group, though there’s a couple of the latter such as the Matagi, or traditional winter hunters also in Tohoku, or even people with varied accents and dialects, notably Satsuma dialect.

Although Japan also promotes a singular dialect of Standard Japanese, there’s a variety of accents in the archipelago. Like the U.S. or U.K., there’s often different words for many of the same thing like soda, pop, or coke in many U.S. regions or what lunch in dinner are called in different parts of the U.K.

Personality wise, the characters all differ in what they want the Ainu gold for. Sugimoto made a promise with a wartime and childhood friend that he’d look after his wife who moved to the United States who was at risk of going blind. A mutinous faction of soldiers, led by 1st Lieutenant Tokushiro Tsurumi, a vengeful intelligence officer, wants the gold to fund a separatist state in Hokkaido to spite the Meiji government. Asirpa was influenced by her father and another Ainu character to also use the gold to separate the Ainu from Japan but for different reasons, and some characters never reveal the truth of their intentions with the gold.

For the most part, the characters are in some way based on real life characters from history. Some are obvious like Hijikata Toshizo living for another 40 years in this universe, and others require some more research to determine their inspirations. My favorite has to be the character Yoshitake Shiraishi who was based on the similarly named prisoner and escape artist, Yoshie Shiratori. Like his inspiration, Shiraishi is described as a master escape artist, finding creative and innovative ways to get out of a jam from contorting his joints to making false keys and using lockpicks. You’d probably need a rotating body of prison guards to keep him in place.

Between Shiraishi and Tsurumi, these characters are both unique and not unique. Their quirks make them stand out from regular background characters, but there’s a bunch of characters who match that description anyone. Sugimoto, for example, gained fame during the war as the Immortal Sugimoto and has thus carried this nomme de guerre in the civilian world. Tsurumi and select soldiers within his unit — 27th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division — are all quirky as well. One might describe it as a circus of sorts. And this is a similar case concerning the prisoners who carry the map on their bodies.

Just about everyone is a specialist in some singular skill or trade. This may make them one-trick ponies by themselves, but there’s a lot of moments where they get to shine independently or in mixed company. Asirpa, for one, may initially seem like a monolithic standard-bearer for the Ainu, especially since she’s introduced with an old and negative stereotype of indigenous people groups from westerns, but both her and the rest of the Ainu presented don’t seem to adhere fully to these misconceptions.

Similar to the Amerindians in the Americas, the Ainu and other people groups in North Asia would’ve spent their lives directly or indirectly interacting with non-indigenous folks, fighting, trading, working, befriending them among other things. They would’ve been exposed to foreign customs and technology sooner or later, hence why during the Manifest Destiny era of the U.S., bands and tribes of American Indians would have fought back with the same rifles that were being used on them. Off the battlefield, cooking and craftsmanship have also caught up with the times, so old depictions of indigenous folk as backwards and removed are just that: they’re old and quite inaccurate.

My introduction to the series came from some old Funimation ads in 2018. At the same time as my anime speedrun during college, bouncing between Crunchyroll, Funimation, and the now defunct VRV, the ads for then-recently adapted Golden Kamuy were showing and initially, I wasn’t that interested. Most people weren’t either. No matter how high the marks, the average viewer would’ve been looking for “time well spent.” This conflicts with the overall negative opinion of CG in anime and with most of the ads depicting Sugimoto’s battle with a CGI bear, prospective audiences were initially turned off.

Then I started watching in 2019 and continued to do so during the pandemic. My opinions on CG have been somewhat influenced by those expressed online, but in all honesty, if it looks good and it means the animators don’t have to crunch to get an episode out, then it can work well for an anime production, and I feel it does here. I honestly didn’t realize the bear was CG until a few frames in. Just goes to show how rare and at times apprehensive studios can be about integrating this technology into a production.

The manga concluded in April 2022, but the anime recently wrapped up it’s fourth season in June after taking a hiatus out of respect for a treasured cast member’s passing in November 2022. A fifth season is currently in development, though as of writing there’s no release date. This is ample time to go through the anime and then continue in the manga or start the manga and compare/contrast the anime. Whatever works best for you.

It’s a month divisible by 2, and the last of the year so as a final sendoff, December’s first YouTube recommendation gets to the heart of a topic I have in store for next week: Cynical Historian.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN5mhhJYPcNUKBMZkR5Nfzg

The Cynical Historian is a YouTube channel that covers the history of the American Southwest primarily, and other topics in history secondarily. Started in March 2013, by former Army cavalry scout and noted historian Joseph Hall-Patton, the Cynical Historian has himself produced lessons and dissertations on his specialty in the American Southwest, namely violence and conflict, sometimes touching on the historicity of the local American Indian groups and figures active during the era. He runs a tight ship on his YouTube channel and has little tolerance for bigotry, hatred, or conspiracy theories of any kind.

One series he does that I recommend above all else is his Based on a True Story series that compares and contrasts historical moments and their silver screen depictions. Since the most recent video he did was in the lead up to the theatrical release of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon film, I suspect that a Based on a True Story video on the little corporal is somewhere in the pipeline, but without clairvoyance, I can’t say more. Be sure to check him out when you find the time.

Before I sign off proper, I had another video lined up emphasizing the surprising significance of food in Golden Kamuy, but couldn’t put it anywhere above, so I’ll link it down here.

Channel: BOOFIRE191

Boruto: TBV Chapter 4

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Drip-feed exposition

The drawback of keeping up to date with a manga is that the expectations I put on myself are to summarize a chapter each time it releases, but the benefits of a monthly manga come with its release window. The larger amount of time it takes to write and draw a chapter give me ample time until the next chapter to get to writing. I’ll try not to make this a pattern, but I can’t promise that. Real life will interfere at times.

So on November 20, Chapter 4 of Boruto: TBV released and continually revealed more surprises especially from Boruto. I talked about events last time where Boruto had planted a toad onto Code’s person; this time around, with the Ten Tails restrained he attempted to cut a deal, but an unforeseen snag cropped up, and it’s somewhat involved with Code and his claw grimes. Whenever the grimes strike someone, they turn comatose and are encased in a tree.

In this panel, one of the Leaf shinobi was bitten by a claw grime and thus became a tree. In a similar manner, at the end of Chapter 3, Boruto used rods and other restraints to trap the Ten Tails, but when he transported himself to its location, the Ten Tails was missing. Instead, he and Code met a few beings that have a connection to the claw grimes. The trees they make when attacking aren’t ordinary trees, but they’re described as divine trees, and since Boruto explains that the beings created are living divine trees, then the conclusion I can draw from this is that the Ten Tails managed to turn itself into numerous divine trees and escape from Boruto’s restraints.

As for how he transported himself, you might recall that as an Ohtsutsuki vessel, he has the Karma seal and its space-time ninjutsu capabilities. Yes, but that’s not what he used to get to the other dimension. In fact, he has a familiar Jutsu to fans of his grandfather: The Flying Raijin.

The legendary technique has a third user on the roster. Created by the Second Hokage, used extensively by Minato Namikaze (and giving him the moniker Yellow Flash of the Leaf) and now Boruto Uzumaki is the newest user of the Jutsu. Continuing with the drip-feed method of exposition, we’re learning just as we go on, so it’s not revealed in this chapter when or how he learned this Jutsu the same way, Naruto learned how to do the Rasenshuriken or go into Sage Mode. Then again, in Naruto’s defense, he learned that long after he’d come back to the village in Shippuden and following the trend, his son may be geared up for a similar training arc.

Whatever the case, part of Boruto’s plan seems to have been to use the Ten Tails as a bargaining chip for Code, but when it turned into divine trees, the plan failed. There’s no Ten Tails to hold hostage and the trees are going to do what they were programmed, absorb as many chakra sources as it can so that it can cultivate a chakra fruit–same as had happened when Kaguya came down from the moon, same as when Momoshiki and Kinshiki and the other Ohtsutsuki invaded and attacked.

These were the only divine trees shown, but there could be others to be revealed in subsequent chapters. Not yet done with the surprises, the clues to Boruto’s Flying Raijin and mechanical toads lies with another familiar face: Koji Kashin. The synthetic clone of Jiraiya, operating as a spy in Amado’s pocket, seems to be working with Boruto, but it’s not yet known who made the proposition. Still, some things can be inferred at the moment.

Before the chapter ends, we get the answer to at least one question: Sasuke’s fate. As I said, the claw grimes make divine trees every time they bite someone and considering the image below, he was also probably unlucky in this regard.

This was a meme for a bit last week, along with another frame of Kakashi planting younger Sasuke. Nice to see the Uchiha tree has finally matured in spite of Tobirama’s efforts to cut it down.

In all seriousness, I wasn’t all that bothered with the so-called nerfing of the old gen to make the new gen look good. In lore, it’s explained that 15 years of peace time led to complacency and only a select few ninja still actively taking missions and whatnot would be the only ones prepared for when a real threat comes around and not just rogue ninja number 1,254–but Sasuke is one of the few ninja who was still going out on missions, many of them taking him either outside of the village or just outside of this reality. For f[Sharingan activation sound]k’s sake, he didn’t even know what his daughter looked like because it’s been so long.

Never mind that he lost the Rinnegan in a surprise attack (not that Boruto being possessed was a surprise, it was a matter of when), it just seems that Sasuke wasn’t as prepared as we all thought, which becomes even more damning when you consider that he’s had much of Sarada’s childhood to prepare and learn about the Ohtsutsuki and their goals. Naruto’s capture works as it shows how badly his Talk no Jutsu backfired, especially on someone like Kawaki who went to extremes to protect him from anything Ohtsutsuki even killing Boruto once.

If Sasuke did get unlucky, then I wouldn’t have problems with it depending on how well it’s explained. And if it’s not that then Kishimoto and Ikemoto oughta work their magic because it doesn’t seem like much of the old gen is getting theirs.

Tenten especially.

Military Novels: A Recent Discovery of Mine

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Practically just started

Before we start, concerning last week’s surprise destruction of The Escapist’s video team, the YouTube channel Clownfish TV (which I’ve recommended before) uploaded a video a few days later that I contemplated dedicating a post to, but ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth it. The minds behind the channel are staunchly independent of any corporate oversight and maintain this position above all else for a better deal in the long-run. The Escapist was bought by a conglomerate which complicated things, and while the team of Kneon and Geeky Sparkles have zero love for dishonest games journalism, part of what motivated a possible post would’ve been to correct the record and clarify what actually went on… or at least I would have.

After sitting back and analyzing what the video concerned, I realized that most of the criticism was elsewhere on The Escapist site and that one’s opinions seldom influence business rules especially from the outside looking in. For me, it didn’t feel like that because the comments section was what got to me.

It’s worth noting that this tends to be the nature of YouTube communities; channels do have their dedicated base and this often leads to biased echo chambers with again very little influence on what goes on in the afflicted realm. Also worth keeping in mind was that reporting on pop culture in any capacity is merely another day in the office for Clownfish TV. Malice can’t be assumed all things considered. As for the community, the one piece of advice that works for me is to get the entire story before judgment is passed. Get all the context and then give your final thoughts.

Now for the real topic I want to write about: military novels. Personally, I’ve never been all that interested in them, and since I’ve been around on r/Army, reading the occasional news stories of controversies surrounding the special forces community in particular, I’ve held a dash of skepticism to go along with what describe as a Heroic Tit-wank in Print form. If you don’t know, special forces like Army Green Berets or Rangers, Navy SEALs, Recon Marines, Air Force Combat Controllers and all of them tend to get the Hollywood treatment more often than not. I’m not saying they don’t deserve the recognition for their sacrifices, their missions, their stories, but they’re not exactly a monolith.

For every Medal of Honor recipient of any capacity like Dan Daly or Ralph Puckett or Alwyn Cashe, there’s also these guys making fools of themselves:

Credit: Getty Images

Credit: Getty Images

Clearly, the worst or more embarrassing stories of the military’s finest aren’t reflective of everyone including the HR folks or the intelligence or signal branches or anyone else who sees it as just another job, but sometimes it gives me pause for thought. As a history buff, I do like military history as well. The Elusive Samurai motivated me to research the Kenmu Restoration and the Ashikaga Shogunate in medieval Japan, for instance, and more than once I’ve done some light research on Civil War battle orders or even the Roman Empire, among numerous other things.

Channel: Metatron

Before even entertaining the idea of the military as a whole, the movies and whatnot all seemed so cool. Call of Duty and Battlefield led the way in cinematic experiences and memorable characters. After watching some more movies, and going to basic training myself, it’s safe to say that if you’ve been in the military — any military — you’re preconceptions are going to be challenged and your newfound knowledge on how things go in the real military will ruin a lot of movies for you.

Prior to shipping, I thought the boot camp portion of Full Metal Jacket was the highlight of that movie, primarily because of the characters: Joker, Pyle, Cowboy, and Gunny Hartman all make that movie, but stepping back from that, it’s divided first into how Marines are trained (sort of), followed by an active combat deployment to South Vietnam. The greatest irony of that movie is that for an anti-war film, so many incoming recruits watch and quote it ad infinitum, and expectedly so. The actors are the highlights of the movie and if it wasn’t for R. Lee Ermey and the jelly doughnut scene, then it probably wouldn’t have the same influence as it does almost 40 years post-release.

In the veteran community, lots and lots of media is heavily scanned and scrutinized based on what we’re all taught in boot camp and when we go off to train for the occupation we chose or have chosen for us based on test scores. This explains why movies like Generation Kill and the Hollywood misfit In The Army Now are more beloved amongst veterans and servicemembers compared to something like Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper, or The Hurt Locker. Even vets who’ve never deployed to a combat zone (yes, this happens, ask around) will tell you that an overwhelming majority of the time is spent waiting to do something and that something goes by exceptionally fast. Such urgency…

Also, fair warning: the military has a frat house mentality. Keep in mind the ages of the people signing up.

So I’ve been rattling on over about military/war media and the reception based on the community viewing it, but I haven’t mentioned what I’ve been reading. As I said, I hardly ever had an interest, even in passing about these kinds of things, and even over time, now that I’ve been in a military training environment, I trend quite lightly these days. You’re drilled day and night about how to properly wear a uniform and even mishaps in film can get a vet’s dander up more so than stolen valor incidents.

I try my best not to overanalyze this stuff or make a monolith or standard-bearer of military/war media since a lot of it is for the public and like a lot of their real-life units, the special forces movies tend to play by their own rules. My rule for whether I should give something a watch or a read is wide reception. Even if the community hates it, it’s not good to let those opinions overtake or form future opinions on XYZ. But so far I have been enjoying Generation Kill, and I do like Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk. Some of these I’m introduced to by proxy and they wind up being pretty good.

For Generation Kill, I went for the book first for comparison to the HBO miniseries. Nearly done with the book and the show so I might come back with some final thoughts. And getting back to controversies in the special forces community, there was one book that caught my eye. I don’t remember how I found it, but it’s called Code over Country by Matthew Cole. It’s based on the wide range of corruption and lax oversight within Navy SEAL Team Six. Once I get my hands on the book and get through reading it, I’ll try to make an effort to give my thoughts. Bear in mind, most vets and servicemembers won’t run into anything close to a special forces unit and for security reasons, most of what they do isn’t revealed until after the fact, so corroborating what I hear will have to be done by way of news reports like those featured on Military Times or its branch specific variants.

This post was kind of a misnomer all around, but before I close off, I want to make a case for the manga series Golden Kamuy.

I say this is a military series for a lot of the obvious reasons: veterans of a major war (Russo-Japanese War), active duty soldiers in uniform, commanders doling out orders by their judgment, and more. But it also takes the tropes of traditional westerns like those of the Clint Eastwood or Dances with Wolves variety.

I have a post in the pipeline regarding Golden Kamuy itself so look forward to it in the next few weeks. I’ll elaborate further on my case then.

The Hunt for Unsung Manga

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I’ve come across a lot of manga series over the years, and while I don’t remember all of them, if I had something similar to My Anime List, I’d probably rank the ones I’ve read or heard of in terms of read (past tense), reading, going to read, or no interest; and based on what I’ve recommended across this blog this year, I’d say that there’s going to be a lot of series that the average manga reader has never heard of or can’t find through conventional means. However long you’ve read manga or watched some of their corresponding anime, you’ve undeniably heard of series like Naruto, Bleach, Dragon Ball, or One Piece. And you know some recent trendsetters by name: Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, KonoSuba, My Hero Academia, etc.

But be honest with me: before reading some of my entries from this year, did you ever know about Wave, Listen to Me? Or Rokudenashi Blues? How about House of Five Leaves? Mashle? Black Torch? No? Well, that’s to be expected. Some of these have only recently gotten their well-earned press and praise and the others rode that ship ages ago. Rokudenashi, for instance, is from the 1980s and it shows.

Only JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure still looks like this.

This quest of mine to find and screen through manga we’ve never heard of or haven’t heard much about is in equal measures personal and exciting. Personally, I don’t mind much of the series that get praised online these days or even IRL, but sometimes the praise can be a bit much. Although I enjoyed Chainsaw Man, my previous excursion with Black Torch by Tsuyoshi Takaki subconsciously colored my perception of the anime. It took me a while to realize how similar they were in structure, but fortunately for Tatsuki Fujimoto, CSM is more comical in comparison. Takaki’s manga seems to have been a victim of the times.

As for the excitement, call it the general sense of joy that comes with discovering something new. And it’s not these are hard to find. Google and Bing are likely to have them indexed and sites like Mangadex may have it in the archives. As for discovering the series myself, some series were the result of accidental Google searches. Others came from digging through the Manga Plus front page or reading an article about supposedly underrated series.

This one specifically came from when I was trying to Google Do You Love Your Mom, AKA the MILF-sekai.

Alternatively, there’s online forums dedicated to discussing manga, the most common one for me being Reddit. It is worth keeping in mind that sites like this will have a younger audience (i.e. early middle school to middle high school age), so what was popular when you were graduating is gonna be seen as old by the time some of these users are your age. I’m writing from personal experience and the weight of this gap is felt for me, but hey, at least Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon still make the rounds, even through memes.

Another point to bear in mind is availability. There’s a difference between knowing the name of a series and knowing where to read it. Mangadex is a weeb’s go-to for series that are running but can’t be easily found, but there’s a chance the series in particular is available to the public in some form or another elsewhere. The only barrier in that aspect would perhaps be the age of the reader or just a trip to the local bookstore. Any Barnes & Noble employee worth their salt would know better than to let a high schooler go home with a raunchy series, but let’s be real there’s always a loophole. Grab a friend who’s older than 18 or go online like everyone else.

Going back to Mangadex, there’s no shortage there of the big four genres of Shonen, Seinen, Shojo and Josei, but if you want something 18+/hentai, then Mangadex will not help you. Even these sites have their limits, and that’s fine. Digging through a pirate site that’ll have what you’re looking for is tricky. In my experience, some pirate sites are overridden with pop-up ads that open a new tab bursting with malware, and it isn’t always when looking for hentai. Some Korean manhwa get scanned and translated into multiple languages by groups advertising these services on donation/contributor sites like Patreon, and many of the pirate sites that they end up on are all third party hosts.

Other sites like Webtoon or Toomics do host them free of all the issues that come with a pirate site, but sometimes have a string or two attached. I’m not lambasting these sites for putting walls up to entry. That’s what deserves praise. It may sound odd of me to admit to pirating while also condemning it, but I’ve been clear on where I stand on that. For some things that, thanks to the passage of time, have grown increasingly difficult to find conventionally, piracy is the most convenient* way to experience it firsthand; and I apply these same rules for series that have concluded or ongoing series that aren’t available in your region (*it’s not always reliable though).

For something ongoing, general or NSFW audience notwithstanding, if you’ve got the means to do so, it’s heavily implored that official releases are supported and as tempting as it is to head for the raw, untranslated version, I won’t act like I have the authority to stop you but for some series, unless you can read and speak fluent Japanese or Korean, I don’t recommend pulling double duty running the dialogue and speech bubbles through Google Translate. Depending on how it’s written, straight translations will contain slang and references that are gonna get lost that way. Translate has gotten better over the years, but it’s no substitute for a structured class. And finally, these languages have scripts that can and do show up as calligraphic works of art. I find it beautiful, but tracing the damn characters into Translate, especially on mobile, gets tedious quickly.

Now I’ve not abandoned or wholly used uncommon means of getting to my favorite series. I recently downloaded the Shonen Jump app on my phone and I have a tab on my computer logged into Manga Plus, and true to the title of this week’s post, I’ve discovered a new manga series that I’d like to explore further called Beat & Motion.

Take this as more of an exploration for how to discover new or underappreciated series and my experiences doing so. My method of doing so, though, is quite slapdash and haphazard, so if there’s a more sensible way of going about this, use that method to the fullest extent. Only go on sites you trust, and please use a VPN of some kind. Opera and its GX variant go a long way, but if you have the means to my recommendations come from those that I’ve seen sponsored on YouTube including but not limited to Dashlane, Atlas, Express, Nord, and Private Internet Access. I like to think everyone is in wide agreement that nothing ruins the fun of reading manga/watching anime more than when a simple mouse click puts you on a site with malware on it.

But of course remember to have fun with what you find.

Black Lagoon Motherf[sheep noises]r

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*gunshots*

This series needs no introduction. It’s famous in the animanga circle for its name, its reputation, its characters, its violence and most of all its f[Boost mobile chirp]ng swear count.

Channel: Edwin De Paz

It’s mostly famous by its anime, but it started off as a manga by Rei Hiroe in April 2002 and has run ever since in the Seinen manga magazine Gene-X, for far, far longer than the anime and its OVA ever did. The clip above (which is understandably though unfortunately age-restricted) is one I will see sometimes on YouTube or Reddit because of course. It’s badass, it’s f[monkey screeches]ng awesome, but around the gratuitous gory action is an appropriately mature story.

I don’t remember when or how I learned of Black Lagoon, but I think it was through some WatchMojo clips about anime gunslingers that introduced me to the series, and it wasn’t until I was in the middle of college that I got around to watching it properly. Before we begin describing the series, no matter your opinion on subs or dubs, I heavily implore you to watch it however you can in English. I mean zero disrespect or offense to the original Japanese VAs, but the writing of the dub makes all the swearing necessary. F[gun cocking]k hits far harder in this anime when accompanied by the sounds of a firing range in comparison.

The premise is this: in the mid-1990s, Tokyo-based salaryman 25-year-old Rokuro “Rock” Okajima and a department chief are hijacked in the South China Sea by a trio of pirates onboard the Black Lagoon PT boat and calling themselves Lagoon Company. The chief leaves Rock to his fate and he joins up with Lagoon Company’s members consisting of Vietnam vet Dutch, Chinese-American gunslinger Rebecca “Revy” Lee, and South Florida computer programmer, Benny.

As the fourth face of Lagoon Company, Rock is the glorified diplomat if Dutch is unavailable, especially since there’s an equal or greater amount of time on land than on sea, mostly in the fictional border city of Roanapur, Thailand. This base of theirs is also home to many more organized crime syndicates the world over including but not limited to Colombian cartels, Russian and Sicilian mobs, the Triads, and the Yakuza.

As for the cast of characters Lagoon Company faces, it’s quite a mixed bag. Just about everyone in the story is motivated by coin, though there’s a fair few who have their own ideals and tenets, not all of them savory or agreeable. Criminals, extremist organizations, drug lords, and general psychopaths are drawn like moths to flame.

Hiroe’s inspiration for Black Lagoon was inspired in triplicate: news reports about piracy in the South China Sea from the 1990s (hence the setting), the writing drew from a variety of influence like Stephen King and James Ellroy, filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, and overall crime noir and Hong Kong action cinema, and other mangaka like Kenichi Sonoda who created Gunsmith Cats (another series I wish to cover one day) and Akihiro Ito who created Geobreeders.

The characters and setting are all diverse in appearance and in skillset, especially protagonist Rock who skirts by on a lack of battle sense with the powers of negotiation and diplomacy. The setting of Roanapur among other places would make the guy an ill fit since he’s not really seen as bloodthirsty as the others, but then again, the wider cast of characters is exactly that unpredictable, or (spoiler incoming) you wouldn’t really expect a guy like this to be an arsonist, would you?

Speaking of which, this speaks to the creativity of Hiroe, understanding that there’s no bog-standard look for a criminal. Some dress in suits, others are tattered, and the rest are casually dressed. The same goes for some of the child characters in the show. Conceptually, almost everything is thrown into the kitchen sink when designing a character and putting them in the story.

As for the chapters themselves, Hiroe has stated in interviews that unlike mangaka who release weekly chapters, he employs a slower approach, often taking as long as a month to release a new chapter, and normally for two reasons: to avoid burnout experienced by mangaka of several popular series still running, and also for mental health reasons. For what its worth, if the research for the series has him glued to news screens and snippets combing over crime on international waters, then it can get daunting keeping it plausible yet exciting. Or if its a series of other things that see him taking multiple hiatuses from Black Lagoon, then whatever happens, the series already gets high praise online and in real life from Japanese and western audiences alike, and not to sign a Death Note of sorts, but even in the worst case scenario, his flagship series will progress toward an ending, even if it isn’t him specifically who will finish it.

Someone will be there to finish it, with him or for him. And no matter what, Black Lagoon started with a bang and I sure hope that when it eventually ends, it ends with a f[swords clanging]ng bang.

This week’s recommendation is the YouTube channel RunJDRun.

https://www.youtube.com/@runJDrun/about

RunJDRun is the gaming channel of John David “JD” Witherspoon, son of late comedian John Witherspoon. Beginning in June 2009, he hosts Let’s Plays primarily on this channel either by himself or with friends, but also has commentary videos on video games or just in general. JD also has a podcast that he co-hosts with his friend Paul. He normally uploads daily, and like his father, he also has TV appearances and performs stand-up from time to time in the Los Angeles area.