Play Magazine Big Anime Giveaway

11/18/09 • 0 min

Play Magazine, my favorite literary game mag, is having an anime giveaway contest in which 5 entrants will win the following 4 anime dvds and sets:

Claymore: The Complete Series

Evangelion 1.0 (You Are Not Alone)

Blassreiter

Dragonaut

Plus a copy of Girls of Gaming 7

Entries must be received by December 10, 2009. You can submit an entry at:

http://playmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=SiteMain.Contest&conid=39

Play Magazine, my favorite literary game mag, is having an anime giveaway contest in which 5 entrants will win the following 4 anime dvds and sets:

Claymore: The Complete Series

Evangelion 1.0 (You Are Not Alone)

Blassreiter

Dragonaut

Plus a copy of Girls of Gaming 7

Entries must be received by December 10, 2009. You can submit an entry at:

http://playmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=SiteMain.Contest&conid=39

Previous Episode

Podcast Episode 195: Happy Mania Volume 1

Podcast manga review of Happy Mania Volume 1 by Moyoco Anno. Translated by Shirley Kubo. Adapted by Leah Ginsberg. Originally published in Japan by Shodensha. Published in US by Tokyopop, $9.99, Rated Mature 18+.

From the back cover:

Watch out, Bridget Jones-- here comes Shigeta, a 24 year old woman-about-town who is obsessed with the right man. The only problem is that the guys she meets are all duds, not studs. Case in point: Takahashi, a geeky co-worker who is head over heels for our heroine. But she'd rather eat nails than be with that loser!

After Shigeta reads her love horoscope in a magazine, she's convinced that the right guy is just around the corner. But the next guy she meets just wants to bonk instead of bond. When Shigeta's doomed romance comes to its inevitable conclusion, she runs to her best friend for solace and a much-needed reality check. But it's not long before another Mr. Wrong enters the picture, and Shigeta is hooked all over again!

They say love happens when you least expect it-- but if you expect it 24/7, then what? Join Shigeta and her gal pals in their hilarious hunt for love, romance, and together-forever commitment.

My Grade: B-

(I am giving away a free copy of Happy Mania Volume 1, still sealed in the original shrinkwrap. Write me at [email protected] by 11/24/09 if you want it.)

Next Episode

Why I Don't Give a Crap About Tezuka

Today when I was in the Barnes and Noble manga section I noticed a book about Osamu Tezuka that kinda pissed me off when I saw the title. The book was titled The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga . It was written by Helen McCarthy. The part that stuck in my craw was the whole “God” thing. I admit I am not much of a Tezuka fan. I TRIED to read the first volume of the Dark Horse Astro Boy, but found it so incredibly dumb I couldn’t finish reading it. I also tried reading Metropolis with similar results after I enjoyed the anime. Unfortunately, the manga had almost nothing to do with the anime. Tried reading Buddha, but was put off by the odd New York Bronx accents being spoken by Asians thousands of years ago. The only work by Tezuka that I have actually liked is his Phoenix saga. I think the guy is overrated. From what little I have read, he seems to have produced a lot of crap titles and and a few really good ones.

Maybe I’m just overreacting to McCarthy’s implication that there can never be anyone as good as Tezuka. Thinking like that disgusts me because if you buy into it, there can never be any progress in the manga field. It rankles me as much as Tom “The Sanctifier” Brokaw saying that the soldiers that fought in WWII were “The Greatest Generation” as though no other soldier ever fought for higher stakes or ever will again. I guess I hate it anytime someone says an artist is “definitive”. Because it is an attempt to put up a wall to block the course of the future. McCarthy’s book is a polar opposite apologia for Chip Kidd’s Bat-Manga, in which the manga artist wasn’t even given credit for his work on the front cover as though he were a leper. Now we have a second rate manga dude being compared to a divine being. Come on. He isn’t Christ.

You can judge Tezuka’s impact on American culture by the whopping box office take of the Astro Boy movie. Nobody was interested. Tezuka no longer matters. If he ever did. He’s just been pumped up by the older generation of manga and anime elitists over the past 20 years. I say screw Tezuka and his pseudo French intellectual beret. Give me Kishimoto, Endo, Arakawa, Tanaka, Tatsumi. Give me the future. And when the hell is someone going to start printing Leiji Matsumoto’s manga works? He is much more important to anime and manga than Tezuka.