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This blog is a storage space for various thoughts, observations and musings centering on shōjo manga (少女漫画, Japanese comics for girls), josei-oriented manga (Japanese comics for women) and manga created by women (in the widest sense). Topics from other fields of relevance, such as music, art, literature and film may be discussed here as well.

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Viewing all posts in category: Film/TV



[Manga & Anime News] The April Agenda

We’ve already entered a new month and April ’17 looks like it has some very exciting things waiting for us – some new beginnings that might bring a sparkle to our eyes in best old-school shoujo manga fashion and some endings that will hopefully not be too tear-inducing…

Fukumenkei Noise/Anonymous Noise TV anime by Tokyo MX based on the manga by Fukuyama Ryouko→ The second week of April marks the start of an anime TV series based on Fukuyama Ryōko’s Fukumenkei Noise (Anonymous Noise). The series has been destined for the whole multi-platform treatment it will be getting (there’s also a movie coming out in November this year) from the start. Yes, it’s literally screaming for a form that goes beyond the printed medium and brings sound into the whole affair because it is about just that – sound, music! From April 11 on, which is the day the first episode airs in Japan, we can expect some pop punk noise accompanying the story of the love triangle between the girl Nino who turns into Alice, the lead singer of the massively hyped newcomer band in No hurry to shout (called Inohari by fans and the media), whose members wear bandages and eye-patches to hide their identities. Their guitarist and main songwriter Yuzu brings Nino into the band after Nino had inspired him to write songs for her back when they were kids and Nino had to overcome the fact that her first love Momo had suddenly moved away. Yuzu himself is still in love with Nino while Nino tries to find Momo through her voice but when she finally does, he rejects her. Momo is now a famous composer of pop songs, feeling guilty about making money with the songs he originally wrote for Nino for whom he still has feelings. He’s just in senior high, the same one Nino and Yuzu attend. And what makes the situtation even more complicated, he’s the bassist in band called SILENT BLACK KITTY who’s being criticized for being nothing but a copy band of Inohari.
Fukumenkei Noise follows Nino and the two very different boys, Yuzu and Momo, and their bands all the way to the top of the pop music world. With the added element of ‘real’ music, the anime will hopefully express even more powerfully the youthful energy and passion of the manga, currently running in Hana to Yume. I can’t wait. And please note: a post for the manga is coming to this very space next week!

Palace Meiji by Kuze Banko (Hakusensha)→ The end of the month will bring readers the final chapter of Kuze Banko’s series Palace Meiji in Hakusensha’s Betsuhana (Bessatsu Hana to Yume), with its June issue in stores April 26. To commemorate the conclusion of the magazine’s number one title, Palace Meji will be getting the magazine’s cover, a color spread and a furoku fan book called “Palace no omoide” (literally “Memories of the Palace”) along with the last chapter. And I’m getting my tissues ready because I really enjoyed young hero Kimiyori’s years of training and working at Meiji Palace, serving the young, tough and beautiful (fictional) empress Akiko. 6 comic volumes filled with episodes of court life in alternative modern-meets-traditional Japan, subversions of gender roles and lots of action, human drama, warm humour and suspense have been published so far, already destined to become classic shōjo manga material.
In related news, another long-running series, the romantic comedy Pochama ni by Hirama Kaname will come to an end in that same issue of Betsuhana.

The final volume of Izumi Kaneyoshi's Joou no Hana→ Following up from this post and the publication of the final volume of Izumi Kaneyoshi’s Joō no hana, it’s only fair to say the fantasy romance series stuck out like a rainbow-colored swallowtail butterfly among the brownish grey moths usually running in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi. The publisher itself must have come to the same realization and transferred the artist to the place she rightfully belongs on its roster of shōjo magazines, that being Monthly flowers. Izumi’s new series of one-shots will start with its first story titled Suisō Yakyoku (let me see, Nocturne of the Water Tank?), a whopping 60 pages including color pages plus the cover of the magazine, published in Gekkan flowers 6/2017 out on April 28. Looks like we’re back in the present day with a ‘it’s slightly complicated’ type of romantic comedy, judging from the short bit of description and the illustration of the two main characters on the flowers preview page.
The current flowers issue (5/2017) celebrates the 20th anniversary of Watanabe Taeko’s Kaze hikaru along with a sticker calender furoku, the beginning of the final story arc of Tamura Yumi’s long-running post-apocalyptic action manga 7SEEDS (which I must admit has the ability to give me nightmares, that series is just not for the faint of heart), and the very last chapter of Kodama Yuki’s Tsukikage Baby, the follow-up to her hit series Sakamichi no Apollon (Kids on the Slope).
My order with the limited edition of the final volume of Joō no hana with the memorial fan book isn’t here yet but I noticed it’s already sold out at most places and going for slightly crazy prices at amazon… See the cover for it, which wasn’t out when I wrote my post last month, on the top right!

So this looks like a fun-packed month that is guaranteed to bring lots of material to shorten rainy spring days and long commutes to and from school/work!

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Categories: Anime, Manga, Manga News.
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Posted on Apr 2, 2017 (Sun, 2:34 am). .

[Manga & Movie News] Movie adaptation of Okazaki Kyōko’s River’s Edge announced

River's Edge by Okazaki Kyouko (Takarajimasha)The most exciting news of the past few days to me came in the form of the announcement of a movie adaption of Okazaki Kyōko’s iconic manga River’s Edge. Principal photography is already being done while the movie is scheduler for a 2018 release in Japanese theaters. Okazaki started her work as a professional mangaka in the early 1980s, releasing mostly short stories and one-volume series both in manga magazine but also sub-culture and fashion magazines. Her extremely productive career – which earned her a cult following among readers and critics alike – was brought to a sudden tragic halt when she was hit by an SUV in 1996. To this day, she hasn’t been physically able to publish a new manga. She is thoroughly missed by her fans and throughout the years has influenced and inspired a lot of creative and intellectual people, among them artists, musicians, film directors, as well as cultural critics and scholars.

River’s Edge (published from 1993 until 1994 in the fashion magazine CUTiE and as a tankōbon in 1994 by Takarajimasha) tells the story of Haruna, a girl in senior high school who recently broke up with her bully and drugdealer boyfriend, and Yamada Ichirō, who is secretly gay and one of the victims of Haruna’s ex-boyfriend’s cruelties. Yamada one day tells Haruna her about his strange ‘treasure’ – a dead body he found by the edge of the river… River’s Edge is undoubtedly among Okazaki Kyōko’s most accomplished works. It is carried by Okazaki’s characteristic way of portraying young people in the 1980s and, in this case, the 1990s, their boredom, loneliness and lack of direction, partly due to their parents’ affluence, their fears and ambitions, their obsession with appearance – but Okazaki goes deep below the surface and finds the ugliness people try to hide and, at the same time, the very moving and fleeting beauty of what it means to be human.

The movie adaptation is currently in its filming stage, with director Yukisada Isao collaborating with Setoyama Misaki on the script. Yukisada rose to fame in 2001 with GO, a romantic zainichi action drama based on the same-titled novel written by Kaneshiro Kazuki. I’m very interested in seeing how he translates Okazaki’s very distinctive visual style into moving pictures. Haruna, the heroine, will be played by Nikadō Fumi and Yamada by Yoshizawa Ryō. (Coincidently, the two have previously acted together in the 2016 movie adaptation of Hatta Ayuko’s manga ÅŒkamishoujo to Kuroōji (Wolf Girl and Black Prince, serialized in Betsuma/Shueisha).) This will be the second movie adaptation of a manga by Okazaki Kyōko, following Helter Skelter for which Okazaki received the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize and which she worked on until the accident in 1996. The movie starring Sawajiri Erika was directed by photographer Ninagawa Mika and released in 2012.

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Categories: Film/TV, Manga, Manga News.
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Posted on Mar 27, 2017 (Mon, 1:08 am). .

[Translation] Vogue Nippon January 2010 Interview with So Jisub + Scans

So Jisub in Vogue Nippon - scroll all the way down for scans

The New Asian Icon – The Asian Bad Boys We Love – Interview #1:

So Jisub – The man whose melancholic charm gets stronger with every “bad guy” he portrays

At the moment, the Korean actor So Jisub (32) is gathering a lot of attention in Japan and abroad. He’s received several movie awards for his film “Rough Cut” (Korean title: Yeonghwa neun yeonghwa da; Japanese title: Eiga wa eiga da) in Korea and the USA. As part of the “next generation” of a wave of actors who are following in the footsteps of the actors in their late 30s who represent Korea, like Lee Byung Hun and Jung Woo Sung, So Jisub is the one people are expecting the most from.

He is meeting these expectations not just in his home country. Actress Zhang Ziyi personally chose him for the role of her lover in the movie “Sophie’s Revenge” in which she plays the female lead and which she also produced. And in Japan, he is the first overseas actor to play the lead character in the joint production original drama “I am GHOST” which is currently up for download on BeeTV.

The characters So Jisub plays are often “men who are wild and sexy yet at the same time lonely and melancholic”. Just as we were preparing for his photo shoot in which we wanted to translate this very charm into pictures, we were surprised when he called us and said he himself wanted to prepare himself as well – because even though people usually arrive at the scene of the photo shooting where everything is prepared for them, to have someone say “I want to prepare myself” is definitely a rare thing.

During the photo shoot, So Jisub works very hard to respond to all of our requests and doesn’t lose his intense gaze and facial expressions for a second, just like he is playing a role in a movie. His concentration and professionalism are so high, the tension at the shoot is rising as well.

And then, the second the shooting is over, he instantly returns to his gentle and shy self and talks to us. A true actor without a trace of the pretentiousness of a celebrity.
The atmosphere at the set becomes calm at once.

We were told by his staff that he wasn’t good at talking but we wanted to take the opportunity of this peaceful mood and ask him for the readers of VOGUE about everything from acting to love.

In “I am GHOST” you’re portraying a killer who doesn’t talk in order to keep his true identity secret. Wasn’t it difficult to play a role without any lines?
For an actor it can be quite difficult to not have any lines but I was totally attracted by the thought of overcoming this difficulty and try and create this character so I accepted this role.

We heard that you don’t talk much. Does that mean you don’t like people who talk a lot?
Of course not. (Laughs.) I also have friends who talk quite a bit. A lot of my friends are as old as I am but it often happens that I’m the youngest so I can’t just sit there and not talk. But yes, people used to have that strong image in their heads that I didn’t talk much.

(more…)

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Categories: Film/TV, Japanese, Translations, Various.
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Posted on Jan 29, 2010 (Fri, 8:06 pm). .




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