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Apr 8, 2023
(crosspost from my Letterboxd review)
I did not expect to be spending my Easter weekend actually watching one of the most religious anime films ever made, but here we are
Broly - Second Coming is about Jesus Christ. It's about the faith one needs to have in order to fight for the future, in order to protect those they love, and in order to achieve their highest strength. Goku is in this movie, more than anywhere else up until this point, a Christ-like figure. He manifests in spirit through the Dragon Balls, but also literally as "our father who art in heaven" in the climax. Much like
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Broly, who returns from the dead, Goku returns as the messager of hope, only to leave again to the spirit realm but not before rekindling in his offspring the sense of hope he inspired in life
Broly, who in here is analogous to Satan (not Mr. Satan, just Satan), is defeated when the Father, the Son(s), and the Holy Spirit (Shen Long) unite and form the triple Kamehameha, the Holy Energy Wave Trinity.
I really wasn't expecting this type of stuff from the Broly sequel movie, but aside from this spiritual subtext I also appreciate the complete detachment from the recap formula, and how it doesn't feel the need to even exist within the main set of characters and places so common to the Z sagas.
Hot take this movie rules. Happy easter!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 29, 2023
Before embarking on working full-time on Berserk, Miura worked once more with Buronson in this one-shot for Young Animal magazine in 1992 and I gotta say maybe I understand why he chose to just do his own thing after doing this one lol
Buronson's writing has been pretty sketchy since his Hokuto no Ken days, with his idealistic portrayal of the ubermensch-like protagonist in post-apocalyptic worlds, but in this case it takes a sour turn into a nationalistic rant about "the New World Order" taking over Japan's national spirit and dominating the world or whatever. The manga is so barebones in its presentation that the only
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thing you're supposed to pay attention to is how "superior" the Japanese race is when compared to all the other ones. It's pretty bad
Miura's artwork is still really strong, though. But there's very little for him to draw in this, aside from the protagonist's angry face as he rambles on about glorious Nihon to everyone he sees. So artwise this is not really worth it either.
I'd say at least it manages to keep a tense plotline with semi-interesting concepts (even if poorly fleshed out), and it's not too long or too short, so it ends up being not a terrible reading experience. Wouldn't recommend it though
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Nov 26, 2022
or that one time Kentaro Miura and Buronson made an Isekai manga in which a Japanese kendo champion from the 1980s travelled back to 13th century China and became one of Genghis Khan's generals
I decided to read this before embarking on the Berserk manga not only because it chronologically precedes Miura's more famous work, but also because it's an instance of a master and his student working together in a single creation. I just finished reading Hokuto no Ken and having acquainted myself with the Buronson style of storytelling, it was so interesting to see it through the visual style of his (for lack of
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a better word) successor. This is, undoubtedly, a Buronson story, but it looks and feels like a Miura manga
Buronson loves his duels, even in moments of warfare and moving armies, he can only write characters into facing off against singular rivals. This is apparent as the kendo master protagonist only faces off against the Mongolian Generals as the armies stand behind them. I don't know much about Berserk but I imagine Miura personally escapes this narrative trap in his own story. But in this work, Miura does contribute with the extreme and maximalist effect of the bloody stand offs between these characters. This is definitely something that he learned from Buronson, but here he does it in his own way, and it becomes clear the moment you realize all duels are fought with large blades, while in Hokuto no Ken, it was always fist fights.
Another large Buronson theme is the imposition of an ancient destiny onto the characters. While in HnK this appears through the constellations, the bloodlines, and the esoteric martial arts, in here it is different, in that the destiny that the protagonist needs to fulfill is that of time itself. As a time traveller, he must maintain the order of history in order to not permanently alter the future (which was once the present). The way the story concludes this is in a way that Buronson also loves: by stating in a very cathartic way that maybe you can (not) change your destiny
Fun work. Works as a neat gesture of an autheur "passing the torch" to another autheur. Let's see what the future holds
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Nov 13, 2022
This took me a long time to read both because it's very long and because it's kind of hard to find a full scanlation online. Luckily for me I can read in Spanish decently enough so I read a Spanish scanlation for most of it.
This is one of the most insane mangas I've ever read and it's definitely Go Nagai's most unchained creative endeavour that I've read (and I doubt he ever made anything more extreme than this but I'd be glad to learn I'm wrong). What starts out as a post-apocalyptic (apparently the first manga of its kind) story develops into a wild crossover
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catalogue and a mix of all sorts of genres and styles, all with the most amount of violence and nudity. You get all sorts of stories inside this seemingly simple plot framework. And while it seems anthological at first, there are several overarching storylines that converge by the end and this was a beautiful surprise for me as things went along and what seemed like one-off characters kept coming back and concluding their arcs.
This is definitely not a Go Nagai work for beginners, both in the sense that it is constantly referencing his old works and that it is an unfiltered display of the author's strengths and weaknesses. I recommend being at least familiar with Devilman, Cutie Honey, Mazinger Z, and Nagai's oeuvre before getting into this, lest you feel completely in the dark as to several creative decisions. It's also worth noting that this is not a manga that would feel comfortable to read for some people, as there's several (and I mean almost one per story arc) portrayals of sexual assault and even some very questionable sexual encounters between characters with problematic (to say the least) age gaps. This is what I mean when I say Violence Jack is not for Go Nagai beginners. Not to even mention the amount of violence and gore, but... I mean, it says right there in the title what you should expect from that department.
This is often said to have influenced Hokuto no Ken but I don't really think the teleology is fair, I think this is doing something very different from HnK. In fact I think the fights and battles in this manga are operating on a very different style than the ones in HnK. I think this had a larger influence on works like Berserk and Kingdom, especially since the manga dives deep into a warfare narrative halfway through and a lot less focus is given to individual bouts and more into larger armed conflicts between armies with tanks, helicopters, missiles and even bombs. Some characters go from being small guerrilla fighters to army generals commanding large war tactics and it's so satisfying to see that development.
And speaking of development, this reaches some insane heights at the end that can feel super cathartic for longtime Nagai fans. I imagine how it must have felt to read the last chapter when it came out. This is definitely a recommended read for people who like the larger Go Nagai universe.
All things considered, I find Violence Jack to be a sort of a rough gem that deserves more attention. People are willing to recognize its reputation in the grand scheme of manga history but not as many are willing to actually sit down and read it, and I believe this should change. If you appreciate some older, rawer and grimier battle manga, do check out Violence Jack. Just brush up on your Spanish/Italian in case you do want to experience this in its entirely
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Aug 5, 2022
(Originally written as my Letterboxd review in 05/08/2022)
So here's the deal. I watched this movie for the first time almost 10 years ago. I completely forgot it almost immediately because at the time I was too much of a normie to even care about movies. Fast forward to early 2022. I decided to start reading the Akira manga
I did it because I had almost no memories of the movie but I was super interested in Otomo as an artist so I thought "eh why not see what his work as a mangaka is like". So I started reading the manga a few months ago and
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after slowly going through it I finished it exactly today. I liked it a lot. The way the story went from cyberpunk to sci-fi adventure to post-apocalyptic gang warfare thriller to avant-garde metaphysical family drama was so exhilerating, I connected with some of the characters in ways I don't often do when reading manga. It was great. Then I rewatched this film
It was like going through it for the first time because I had very little memory of it aside from the iconic scenes. What surprised me the most was simply: this movie is VERY different from the manga! This is like a super abbreviation of the story originally published as the comics. There's like SO much more in the manga, I can't even begin to explain. The plot is extended to be a lot more complex, some characters have different origins, some characters have different conclusions, some villains go through a whole ass redemption arc, some literal gag characters become the most important elements in the plot, some characters who don't even get names in the movie have more "page time" than main characters... Anyways, it's very different
I would recommend the manga for those who liked the movie and wanted to experience more of this universe and its characters. I noticed that a lot of characters die in the film while their manga counterparts go all the way to the end, and I wonder if Otomo was asked by his editors to keep these characters alive when writing the manga while in the movie he was given more liberty to end them whenever he wanted. I think I actually like the manga and the film for kind of different reasons, but I can't deny that it's impressive that the movie was able to condense a somewhat complex story into 2 hours without it feeling confusing or abstract. In fact, I think it did a better job at explaining the concepts than the manga did!
Anyways this is a classic for a reason. It's not only a feat of animation but a definitive progenitor of the cyberpunk aesthetic. Not only that but it also is a story with independent but correlated layers that go from the more basic story of a maturing man learning to sacrifice himself for his loved ones, to the political plot which alludes to colonialism and fascist projects of racial purity and eugenics, to the more transcendental tale of the human condition coming in contact with superior modes of existence and finding its own place in the long thread of universal evolution
Better than I remembered!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 16, 2022
The oldest anime I ever watched, back then it was mostly doing whatever Disney or Fleischer were doing but with a Japanese setting (I know it's more complex than that but whatever). In this case it's a short about Mickey Mouse invading an island and the natives fighting against the foreign invader. Despite my love for disney hate, I gotta share what user Systemhalodark said in the comment section of the video:
"The irony, considering that this is what they were doing to China at the same time."
This is from a period before the concept of anime was created, which happened somewhere in the 1960s or
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1970s, so it's kinda even hard to think of it in "anime" terms. It's really just a simple animation (I'm writing this just to fill the review length quota)
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 22, 2022
I was first exposed to this manga when I was 8 years old and it stayed in my memory ever since. At the time I had just discovered the world of manga through Naruto, which was being published monthly in tankobon form here in my country. I fell in love with the format and wanted to learn more about the different types of mangas that existed out there. At the time I wasn't much online and resorted just to looking up on the "comic book" section of bookstores
I was just a child and didn't really have any money so I wasn't really planning on
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buying any manga in the bookstore but they allowed us to just browse and take a quick look at the stuff. So I was looking at the spines of the books for interesting things. I remember there being your usual Full Metal Alchemist, Samurai X, One Piece. But near the top of the shelf was this red book with dark red snakes. I picked it up and the image of the woman being covered in snakes while a little boy watched from a distance instantly imprinted itself into my head and still hasn't left
I was somewhat of an impressionable child, and I had no idea manga could be gorey and violent. I mean, I had read Naruto which does have blood and violence, but not on Hideshi Hino levels, of course. What really hooked me was the boy, who looked genuinely terrified, and perhaps I identified with him because the image was as impressionable to me as it seemed to be to him. I instantly flipped through the book
I don't remember stopping to actually read any of the individual pages and was just more interested in looking at the images, and oh boy did I see some shit. This manga has some really gruesome imagery which maybe for someone who's used to guro and Junji Ito stuff might not be THAT impressive but for a child who had never seen anything like that before, it absolutely was. I remember specifically the old man with a disgusting face and a huge tumor on his chin, and, what is probably the thing that terrified me the most, the deformed mother putting a comb on her head and it stabbing her skull and leaving a bloody mess
As I read this now as an adult I realize I've grown quite used to these violent sights and all the things I remember being awful to look at were just bizarre at most now. The part with the mom wasn't even the way I remember it lol But it was absolutely interesting to go back and actually read through the story to understand what was actually happening.
I'll say that the manga in my head was a lot more terrifying than the real one that exists, but that's just my subjective memory anyways
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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