Aug
1
Happy Yaoi no Hi!
Filed Under Blog, Features, Noteworthy | 4 Comments
Fujoshis run wild because today is your holiday! Today we are celebrating Yaoi no Hi, an otaku holiday derived from the 801 combi that represents ‘ya-o-i’ in Japanese culture.
To celebrate things, they’ve released Tonari no 801chan2 in Akiba! Tonari no 801chan is a book based on the mangas done by Ajiko Kojima in her blog. Her comics are hilarious, but the book has more extras on 801chan’s crazy fujoshi antics. lol. I think a DVD with their stories will be released soon. September 5? The premise is the story of a guy who has a fujoshi girlfriend and how he gets by in getting along with her. There is also another novel, Fujoshi Kanojo, which has already sparked the interest of movie makers. lol. I guess the Densha Otoko craze has now turned to the fujoshi side.
Speaking of which, Mangacast announced before that Mediablasters is licensing “Mousou Shoujo Otaku Kei”. I had the chance to read the manga thanks to a friend and love it to the core. It’s the story about this guy who fell in love to this fujoshi. The fujoshi is… really weird to an extent. She’s quite hardcore with nothing but her pairings and her doujinshis at the center of her universe. How the guy tries to win the girl’s heart is hilarious! XD I learned a lot about fujoshi culture, and laughed my heart out when the girl said “Can you call me Shinji-kun instead!?” XD People curious about the fujoshi life should try getting this manga. Honestly, reading it is like listening in on how my fujoshi friends and I babble like mad idiots about our favorite series and BL seiyuus. It’s really nice. If you know the fanfare (e.g. Hagaren no Oujisama = overkill!! XDD) the series is a lot more fun. I wish Mediablasters does a good job with translating it. Although, I must say, even if they translate it, I won’t get to buy it because novelty titles such as this one rarely gets here. *sigh* otaku life is so hard on this side of the planet. I wish I lived a few degrees higher.
p.s. If you guys don’t know what a fujoshi is, here’s a great explanation! (yes! New site to troll!)
Nov
12
ARMAGEDDON AND UTOPIA IN NAOKI URASAWA’S 20TH CENTURY BOYS
Filed Under Features, Insights, Noteworthy | 1 Comment
This was a paper I submitted for my Japanese Literature class. I thought of sharing to people what I have learned about 20th Century boys using the fantastic theory in Japanese Literature.
It was at the summer of 1969 that Kenji, Yoshitsune, Maruo, Otcho, Keroyon, and Donkey made a pact of true friendship. In an open grassy field, the boys built their secret base. They tied leaves together and set traps along the way. In it, they shared mangas, music, jokes, and dreams. In crumpled papers, they drew fantasies of saving the world from a giant robot as well as saving the world from a deadly virus. They were nothing but children’s dreams, foolish childish dreams. In that base, they explored a world outside their limited reality. They had their own world inside that fortress. Anything of their world remained in that fortress and that very base protected the boy’s dreams of the future. At their hideout, they held a sign which became a symbol of their true friendship. Anyone who knew that sign was a true friend. Little do the boys know that 30 years after, the sign would haunt them again. A ‘true friend’ appears and asks the boys to play a little game — a game that would bring their dreams into reality.
In his 10th work, Naoki Urasawa explores the relationship of 7 boys and how their dreams and their realities all intertwine to create a new world, to the benefit of one, and to the horror of the six. 20th Century Boys (二十世紀少年, Nijuu Seiki Shounen) is a brilliant tale of how our actions in the past can completely change the future. Change is even an understatement. Change in 20th Century Boys brought about a complex revelation of how a forgotten face makes himself present by creating into reality the utopia that a band of boys created. It is this alienation and utopia that we will explore in this paper. Through the eyes of 20th Century Boys, we hope to see how modern writers today envision their utopian future. Could there be really a utopia? Or is one’s utopia another’s nightmare?
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Otaku Champloo is...
a small serving of bittersweet manga bits by a manga addict named Khursten.
She currently digs mangas about boys who live to be men. -
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