Spring Streaming Season Part Three: Boys Will Be Boys

The Spring Season also brings us a healthy batch (or heaping pile, depending on your tastes) of new anime blockbusters from the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump and the fattening wallets of Toei Animation. In the first installment of these reviews, I talked about potentially "unforgettable" anime, but these are the ones we'll REALLY remember for years. Why is that? Because they'll be running for years and years and decades, until the cash cow milk runs dry.

SKET Dance
Just about any frequent Shonen Jump reader will agree with the following statement: to be successful, a Jump series needs to have either an interesting setting or interesting characters. While SKET Dance is plenty watchable and good fun, it is blazingly obvious that it features neither qualities.

SJ franchises in the past have had diverse and fascinating settings, such as a "Grand Line" inhabited by pirates, or maybe a "Soul Society" where shinigami lurk. Not for SKET Dance though, which settles for a normal high school home to (mostly) normal students. This unnamed mystery school is home to the SKET Dan, a small club (Okay, trio) dedicated to helping people (SKET is short for Support Kindness Encouragement Troubleshoot) with problems, a la after school special, though they will occasionally do odd jobs like taking care of monkeys (?). Only one of these members of SKET Dan is at all interesting, the brainiac Switch, who is shy enough to only talk out of a simulated computer voice, but egotistical enough to declare one moment the "Switch, you're Awesome!" Segment. However, Switch is given less attention than the remaining two thirds of the group, Himeko, a boring example of the "tough chick" cliche, and the protagonist, Bossun, your typical SJ funny guy with a secret power (in this case, goggles that make him more focused [?] ). In short, though the show can still get better, the horribly straightforward concept bars it from greatness.
SKET Dance is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Blue Exorcist
When the Blue Exorcist manga made its North American debut from Viz a few months back, it was received a generally warm welcome from the blogging community at large, though often noting that the first chapter was... not so great. I can't really say how accurate these opinions are, as I have yet to get to reading the manga. 10 bucks is a lot of money to plunk down on a new manga that will likely take me 10 minutes to read (What can I say? I'm quick with shonen), so I decided I would sample the series through the anime, and I am glad to report that if the manga is at all as enjoyable as the anime (save the apparently bland first manga chapter), then Blue Exorcist has a good chance of joining the ranks of the best shonen manga.

The plot of these first two episodes (which cover the aforementioned bland first chapter) is rather cliched: Trash-talking badass Rin and his brother Yukio have been raised by the kindly (but also badass) priest Father Fujimoto. However, Fujimoto is not really Rin's father in any way other than his title, as Rin is actually the spawn of Satan! After a violent encounter with Satan and some other demons, Father Fujimoto is dead and Rin vows to become an exorcist and "Beat the shit out of Satan." This is story is kind of silly (And when in the christian bible were there ever demons at all like the ones in this show?), the series makes the creaky cliches feel new again with impeccable pacing and snappy dialogue. The mix of familiar tropes and bold storytelling is comparable to Fullmetal Alchemist, another shonen series by a female author. Overall, Blue Exorcist is a fun, exciting new series that deserves attention for the outfits alone, not to mention all the other great stuff.
Blue Exorcist is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Toriko
Of all the current (by which I mean less than 10 years old) series running in the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump magazine (not counting Jump Square, V Jump, Jump X, etc.), the second best would probably be Toriko, second only to the fantastic unlicensed comedy Beelzebub. Though I have yet to getting to reading past the first volume, it impressed me enough that I was actually moderately excited about Toei's hotly anticipated new anime adaption. The anime was good enough, but as an adaption, the show is sorely disappointing.

The anime, just like the manga, is set in a Gourmet era where mutated animals are as delicious as they are deadly. Meet Toriko, the most badass gourmet hunter ever, and his milquetoast assistant Komatsu. Together they defeat and devour the most terrifying and tasty animals ever! GRAAAH! Not exactly the most substance-heavy, but unless you're a devout member of PETA, it's good fun nonetheless. Even so, the anime version is neigh-unwatchable, for just one simple reason: the color scheme. Toriko was not a particularly pretty series in the first place, but this just destroys it. Bright colors are a good choice for saturday-morning type cartoons like this, but this just goes too far! Pink gators? Green apes? Ugh! The adaption's one saving grace is the inexplicable casting of Rumi Park (Fullmetal Alchemist's Ed, Nana's Nana Osaki) as Komatsu. Even though this can be very distracting, it's weirdly entertaining to hear the voice of an alchemist and a punk rocker reduced to a complete and utter wimp.
Toriko is streaming on Funimation.


Also Streaming
Aria the Scarlet Ammo, Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, Tiger and Bunny, Tono to Issho, Battle Girls - Time Paradox

AND THAT IS ALL

Manga Industry 2011: Five Predictions

Looking towards the future.


 Recently, Zac Bertschy declared on ANNcast that the manga industry is the anime industry two years earlier. If this is the case, then this year will be a very difficult year for english manga, as the current structure will implode, and publishers will scramble to find a new business model before it's too late. Warning shots were fired last year with the closure of CMX manga (closely mirroring the collapse of Geneon Entertainment) and, more shockingly, the major layoffs and budget cuts of industry giant Viz Media. This is a major year of change, and here are 5 things I think will happen:

1: Vertical becomes the new industry giant

This is incredibly obvious, as the once-underdog company Vertical was the only manga company last year to report major profits, but it deserves note. Once upon a time, I thought that Vertical's artsy format, small number of titles, and emphasis on classics barred them from being major, but in reality, this is what will save the company from the coming downturn. Their small roster of titles means each and every one of them gets a huge marketing push, and what I had previously interpreted as a focus on "classics" and an"arty" format was really a important skill at presenting their material for a larger audience. And these skills will protect Vertical from financial trouble while licencing major titles from across the spectrum of very different manga titles, from Chi's Sweet Home to Lychee Light Club.

2: Tokyopop dies

The fact of the matter is, T-Pop has been publishing too much, and the only big hit they've had outside of the out of print CLAMP titles now published by Dark Horse was Fruits Basket, a title that may very well be eventually forgotten in a sea of already read that. Well, Hetalia is pretty huge, but the series is basically a ton of internet memes, and it's origins as a web comic make it ripe for scanlation. Also, let's face it, anyone who's ever bought a volume of Karakuri Odette can tell you that their marketing sucks, (Hot robot? I think not!) a bad sign when it will soon be a fight to get people interested in your titles.

3: Naruto to fall from grace, One Piece to replace it

The Naruto franchise has been going on too long to sustain itself. This is not meant to demean the title, nor do I think it will ever disappear. What I mean is, there is no way this one title can sustain an entire industry anymore, not even if it teams up in sales with Bleach. But there is one that can. I am of course referring to One Piece, once a side note, but now a record breaking example in sales figures, popularity from reviewers and the public alike, and volume numbers (61 and counting). I don't know if it's level of phenomenon can ever match what it is right now in Japan, especially with this being the first english attempt at starting up the franchise, but it could potentially be the industry's savior.

4: Viz restructures

Viz is doing too much. It hurts to say this, as Viz's various imprints are all great, but they will have to cut down, or otherwise face a big backlash in the near future. At risk are the non-manga New People Films and Haikasoru Books imprints, not to mention the already unprofitable Signature imprint. Fans- show your love for your favorite line before it disappears!

5: Shonen Jump goes online

With the (relative) success of Yen+ Online and the death of print magazines, SJ taking an online initiative is probably the biggest no-brainer of everything on this list. Who knows- maybe it could stop the Naruto-Bleach-One Piece scans once and for all. No, wait, it won't, but oh well.

Zyword of the week episode 2: A very Beriichi Christmas

 Okay, to be honest, I don't hate what I am about to talk about with a fierce passion, which will be mostly what I will talk about in this column. But it's Christmastime, and Christmastime is not a time for rage, just mild displeasure. Anyway, it is something I wish did not exist, and that is what this column is about.
  Bleach requires no introduction. Alongside Naruto and One Piece, it represents the third half of the modern Shonen Jump's holy trinity of gargantuan manga properties. Naruto is overlong, but the author clearly loves writing it. One Piece is genuinely amazing, as I have detailed previously. However, Bleach is just sad.
 It began sublimely, with a small cast and a fun premise, with stylish art to boot. Written by Tite Kubo, the story followed the adventures of Ichigo "Strawberry" Kurosaki, and orange-haired tough guy who can see ghosts, Rukia Kuchiki, a soul reaper (shinigami in original japanese) who, after accidentally giving Ichigo all her powers, acts as his mentor, his friends Orihime and Chad, Kon, a talking stuffed animal (long story), and their adventures fighting "Hollows", incomplete and therefore evil spirits. With that begins a fun, stylish romp though otherworldly spooks. It was even better than One Piece. Until...volume four.
  It's no secret that the Shonen Jump editors secretly control all the manga. Dragon Ball Z is probably the most famous examples of an editor forcing an author to change their plans for, well, monetary reasons. However, none have been ever so shocking as what happened to Bleach. In volume 4, Rukia is kidnapped by her evil brother, and with the help of some side characters who will never appear again, Ichigo and team go to the Soul Society to save her. I must admit, at first this idea left me a little giddy with fanboy excitement. If Bleach was neat and off the wall, who knows what will happen when the rules of the normal world are completely scrapped. It was going to be like One Piece's Grand Line. Boy, was I in for a shock. Lame, repetitive plotline of fight-lose-train-win-train. Stock, cliche characters. Hard-to-follow script. Random use of Ki. No character development for anyone but Ichigo, if you call power ups development anyway. Lack of trademark wit and spunk. And, of course, financial success. I hate to say this, since I have many friends who happen to be die hard fans of Bleach, but this series is ruined for me now. Bleach is dead. A different, lower quality series that happens to be called Bleach has taken its place. I really wish this new series didn't exist.