Category: Manga

Exclusive Interview With Remote Angel Authors Yennie Fer And Banunu

Published August 7, 2023

The Kickstarter for Remote Angel Volume 2 is ongoing as of the time of this article and I am honoured that I’ve been given the chance to do this exclusive interview with the authors behind this series, Yennie Fer and Banunu.

Why don’t we start by introducing yourselves to the readers?

Yennie Fer: Hello! I am Yennie Fer. I am an author and the main artist of Remote Angel. I have been doing art nearly my whole life and picked up on writing as a passion in 2020.

Banunu: So my name is Banunu. I have always had a passion for reading and writing. When I reached middle school, I decided that I wanted to start seriously pursuing it.

And since Remote Angel is the topic today, could you give us a brief overview of the premise?

Yennie Fer: Sure! After a freak accident of an attempted assault, Alice Desangi wakes up in a different apocalyptic universe. Gifted with mysterious powers of an earth angel, she dies in unfortunate occurrences. She wakes up to relive that day again in a confused manner. Depending on her choices, they could change history.

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Several Anime And Manga That Were Cancelled

Published July 13, 2023

I’ve spoken before about manga seeing their English releases cancelled but it’s quite different when a series, anime or manga, sees their release in Japan cancelled. When it comes to anime, it can be a little nebulous about when something is cancelled but I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some anime and manga series that ended up getting cancelled, some of which may prove quite surprising.

Considering the sheer size of the Gundam franchise, which grossed nearly $1 billion last year, it may shock some of you to hear that the series that started it all, Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979-80, was originally due to run for 52 episodes but suffered from poor TV ratings and ended up having its episode count cut to 43 episodes. While a trilogy of compilation films revitalised the franchise, eventually resulting in Gundam becoming one of the most valuable intellectual properties in the world, it’s always surprising to remember that this titan of anime started out as a ratings failure which resulted in its cancellation.

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Anime And Manga That Are Primarily About Food

Published June 29, 2023

I’m sure we’re all aware of the many lovely shots of food that we see in anime and manga and how delicious they look with examples that primarily spring to my mind being the food from the restaurants in the film “Your Name” and the ramen from the manga and anime “Naruto”. However, there’s also plenty of anime and manga that whose purpose when it comes to food is much stronger, being a central core around which the whole story revolves. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to talk about some anime and manga that primarily deal with food as part of their story.

When it comes to the history of these food anime and manga, the earliest example that I’m aware of is a manga called “Cake Cake Cake” written by Aya Ichinoki and Moto Hagio, one of the Year 24 Group, which centred around a girl, who adores sweets and cakes, moving to Paris in order to learn more about preparing pastries. With regards to anime, the earliest example that I’d aware of is a series called “Mister Ajikko”, an adaptation of the manga of the same name that aired from 1987 to 1989. Of course, I’m sure there must be earlier examples and I would greatly appreciate it if you could leave a comment if you are aware of any earlier titles.

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Ribon, Nakayoshi And Ciao: The Three Important Shojo Magazines

Published June 12, 2023

I’ve touched on Weekly Shonen Jump and Weekly Shonen Magazine quite a bit and have even dedicated an article to Weekly Shonen Sunday! However, while certainly the most popular, there are other manga demographics besides shonen. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some shojo magazines, specifically the three most important, Ribon, Nakayoshi and Ciao.

The earliest of these is Nakayoshi which saw its first issue released in 1954. Published by Kodansha, the magazine has been continuously running since and has sold over 400 million copies over its lifetime. One of the earliest manga that I’m aware of from Nakayoshi is the remake of Princess Knight, a popular series from legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka, and has made very significant contributions to Japanese popular culture since with numerous popular series such as Candy Candy, Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura running in the magazine.

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My Favourite Manga From Each Major Publisher

Published May 15, 2023

I recently wrote an article called “Some Of The Most Notable English Language Manga Publishers” and, while already mentioning it for one publisher, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at my favourite manga that I’ve read from each of the English language manga publishers that I mentioned.

Starting off with Viz Media, my personal favourite is the legendary “Death Note”. Part of this may come down to nostalgia as it was one of the first manga that I ever read but I also think it remains a fantastic series. For those unfamiliar with the premise, although I bet they are far and few between, Death Note follows a character called Light Yagami who discovers a notebook, the Death Note, which allows him to kill anyone by writing their name into it. What results is a brilliant game of cat and mouse that constantly keeps you guessing what’s about to happen. Granted, the ending isn’t as good as I would’ve liked but it remains a landmark title in the medium of manga.

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What Are Espers And Their Prevalence In Japanese Media

Published May 8, 2023

When exploring Japanese media such as anime, manga and video games, you’re quite likely to come across a term that is infrequently used in the West, “Esper”. It’s a word that is actually quite easy to understand but, due to our lack of familiarity with the term, many can still be quite confused. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what espers are and their prevalence in Japanese media.

Let’s start with what an esper is. An esper refers to someone who has ESP (Extrasensory Perception), hence the first three letters in the word esper. ESP refers to any ability to obtain information outside of the five senses with examples including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition etc. Note that the term only refers to the ability to receive information, not the ability to affect the world around such as telekinesis, levitation, astral projection etc. However, as we are going to see, espers in Japanese media are not restricted by this and are often depicted as being capable of exerting force using their psychic abilities.

Tetsuo from Akira is one of the more notable espers in Japanese media.

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The Interesting Trope Of Banchō and Sukeban

Published April 27, 2023

As I was watching Ultraman Taro, a tokusatsu series, the other day, there were a couple of episodes where some children were being bullied by their seniors and something that stood out to me was their clothing. Large heavy jackets that were black in colour with a tinge of blue, a peaked cap and quite a few metal accessories. I explained to those present that this outfit indicated that they were juvenile delinquents and that I’d seen them in a variety of Japanese media. Realising that I’d never talked about it before, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the interesting trope of Banchō and Sukeban.

Let’s begin by looking at what the words “Banchō” and “Sukeban” mean. Banchō, written as 番長 in Japanese, originally referred to a governmental position that involved controlling troops near towns and was repurposed to describe the gangs and leaders of juvenile delinquent males around the mid-20th century. As these gangs refused to admit female members, sukeban, written as スケバン in Japanese, were established which were female juvenile delinquent gangs.

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Some Of The Most Notable English Language Manga Publishers

Published April 20, 2023

I’ve spoken quite a bit about the state of manga in the West such as how to read manga online legally and even what my favourite editions from English language manga publishers have been but I recently realised that I haven’t actually devoted an article to some of the most notable English language manga publishers. Therefore, I thought I’d rectify this and take a look at them while discussing a little of their history.

In my personal opinion, the most notable amongst all the English language manga publishers would be Viz Media. Within my own manga collection, Viz Media releases make up about half of all the manga that I own which I attribute to their numerous imprints such as Weekly Shonen Jump, Weekly Shonen Sunday, Shojo Beat, Viz Signature which cover a wide range of demographics and genres. Viz Media was originally founded as Viz Communications in 1986 in order to distribute manga in America and, since then, they’ve ended up becoming one of the largest, if not the largest, distributors of graphic novels in North America.

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A Harmless Bit Of Self-Promotion

Published April 13, 2023

I started this blog near the end of 2019 and have been consistently releasing two blog posts per week ever since. I recently surpassed 365 blog posts which means that, if you felt so, you could read a post a day for over a year at this point (give it a shot with the newly added Random Post button that is in the widget)! While I’ve been promoting my other work via the blog in subtle ways over the years, I’ve never written a full article dedicated to it. Therefore, I thought that I’ve earned the right to do a harmless bit of self-promotion and taking a look at some of the other places you can find me.

I’ve mentioned my main YouTube channel in the past and think it logical to start there. The channel itself is called “Immortallium” which I’ve since adopted as my online persona and it eventually became a channel dedicated to the mediums of anime and manga with discussions about specific topics, reviews, recommendations etc. I’ve also been laying the ground to begin looking at and discussing tokusatsu which has become a recent interest of mine. If you’re interested in anime, manga or tokusatsu then I would fully encourage you to give my channel a shot and see if you enjoy the content.

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The Fascinating Impact Of The Moon Rabbit

Published April 10, 2023

I’m currently watching Ultraman Taro, as part of my recent fascination with tokusatsu, and there was a particular episode where they mentioned the rabbit on the Moon. As you can imagine, the people I was watching the show with were quite confused so I ended up having to explain what the Moon rabbit was to them. However, it brought to mind that I had actually come across the Moon rabbit in a variety of media and that it might be worth discussing. Therefore, I thought that I’d take a look at the fascinating impact of the Moon rabbit on media.

Let’s start with what the Moon rabbit is. When looking at the Moon from Earth, you will only see the near side of the Moon which is covered in lunar maria. Different cultures have interpreted these lunar maria differently with some believing it resembles a man’s face or a lady but the cultures of East Asia and the Native Americans interpreted the lunar maria as resembling a rabbit with the East Asian cultures also seeing a mortar that’s being used to make the elixir of life, mochi, medicine etc.

An outline showing a trace of the Moon rabbit and its mortar.

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