Jun 25 2008
I haven’t come here to talk about manga for a while, and I’ve really read quite a bit of it in the meantime, though much of it has been a single series. Work on my own graphic novel has been going slowly, but right now, I feel like talking about other people’s universes.
I think I mentioned that I finally got the last 11 volumes of Banana Fish (thank you to a generous birthday gift from my folks), and I gobbled them up in very little time.
Jan 09 2008
Wow, it’s been a while, I realize. The holidays took over my life for a bit, but now I’m back into the daily grind. I worked a lot on the graphic novel over the past week, and things are really starting to take shape. I won’t have as much time, now that I’m back to work, but I’m trying to set some realistic goals over the next few months to keep myself motivated. I truly have never had an original project of my own that excited me as much as this one does, which helps too. I’m hoping to have a final script for the entire series completed by the end of the year, and possibly even well before then, depending on how demanding the rest of my life is. I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions, because I think they tend to set a person up to fail, so I’m not going to make one. But my desire to complete this project is strong, as is my resolve to do so.
I also did some reading over the holidays! Continue Reading »
Dec 12 2007
It’s been a while since I’ve written here, primarily due to stress and illness, both of which are still with me. Tonight I am snuggled under and electric blanket with my pup at my feet, and as usual, these things make me want to talk about manga. Actually anime, tonight, I guess. Heavy cold and flu medicine have made reading difficult, though I am still working my way through the Bleach manga, and have re-read Fullmetal Alchemist 13 & 14 in anticipation of the English release of volume 15, which should be sometime this month, I think.
Speaking of Fullmetal Alchemist, I must take this opportunity to tell you all that my workplace Secret Santa (who today was revealed to be our creative director’s assistant, Chelsey) has outdone every Secret Santa in the history of time by making me an Elric Brothers shrinky-dink keychain. I repeat, an Elric Brothers shrinky-dink keychain. That’s right, she drew Edward and Alphonse Elric on a shrinky-dink, baked it, ran a key ring through it, and gave it to me for Christmas. I spent much of this afternoon admiring it, and now my coworkers may believe I am insane. I will attempt to blame this on the illness.
Anyway. Continuing. Not even illness can stop the consumption of anime, so that’s what I’ll talk about tonight. Continue Reading »
Nov 27 2007
The past few days have been a mix of wonder and difficulty. On one hand, I came from the long weekend having accomplished more on my graphic novel than I had in weeks, which felt really good. On the other, I’ve been thrown back into the daily grind, and it is not sitting well at all. I’ve never been good at balancing my creative life with my gainful employment, at least not since they stopped being the same thing, and I suppose that problem is simply more pronounced coming out of a long, creative weekend. Someday perhaps I’ll be able to manage this balance (or perhaps the two things will be one again), but that day is probably pretty far off.
To distract myself, I will talk about anime. Surprised? As predicted, we did finish the entire series of the Mushishi anime, and I have also now read the first volume of the manga.
Nov 23 2007
Wednesday evening, while flipping through advertising materials that came with our Fullmetal Alchemist DVDs, Paul’s eye was caught by an anime series called Mushishi. He read about it a bit, and pointed it out to me too. We both thought it looked interesting, so he downloaded a couple of fan-subbed episodes, and we decided that if we liked those, we’d buy the DVDs. Those discs are now on their way to our house, but considering that we’ve now watched through episode 11 of the fansubs, it’s likely we’ll have finished the entire series before they even arrive. I’ll talk a bit about the first 11 episodes now.