As soon as the new season of the Gintama anime started, I noticed a couple of tweets asking whether the Gin Tama¹ manga was cancelled since the US Viz release of the 23^rd volume was declared as the final volume. The manga is still going strong in Japan and when I checked my 23^rd volume, it didn’t have a joke on being the last volume. Hence, I was surprised with the blurb in the same way that I was surprised that this even happened at all. How did one of Japan’s most popular titles close its pages in the US? Perhaps I should first ask: how did Gintama get translated in the first place?

I do remember what I felt in seeing the first volume of Gin Tama (as appropriated by Viz) a long time ago, wondering even why it exists. Having been a fan of the Japanese original, there were two problems I saw with a Gintama translation. First, it was deeply entrenched with Japanese concepts, trends, and puns that it would be difficult to translate without having to write tons of footnotes on why that pun was supposed to be funny².  Second, the manga’s loaded with childish Japanese humor, the stuff that young teenagers refuse to let go of. We’re talking about poop jokes, dick jokes, boob jokes, idiot talk, idiot choices, and warped childish logic that are certainly not everybody’s cup of tea. At least to my experience, not everyone can ride on that humor. Unless you’re a Japanese kid³

When I browsed through that issue, I found myself appreciating the lengths that Viz had done for the US translation. They chose the path of keeping the humor and the story but they sacrificed a bit, and at times a lot, of the context. Gin Tama’s for a different audience after all. When American teenage boys are hell bent on their action heroes beating people to a pulp, seeing a hero pick their nose might just throw them off. It’s not a bad thing. The comic was still funny even if Gin Tama was not Gintama. It might sell but as I placed the volume back to the shelf, I had a feeling that kids might not get the 魂 (tama or in english “soul”) in Gintama.

Gintama takes pride in being a series with a lot of soul. The main character, Gintoki believes that as the hero, he upholds the soul and dreams of many boys. This can mean a lot of things but it can go as easy as helping the elderly to doing what you think is right to protecting the people you love. But this is just a part of Gintama’s soul. The entire city of Kabuki-chou, its crazy denizens and its culture, is a microcosm of metropolitan Tokyo. In it there are women who work in cabaret clubs, men in host clubs, brothels, thieves, otaku, perverts and the occasional densha otoko. The characters fall in love with digital girlfriends and they go in online anonymous boards to get advice on love. Gintoki is an avid reader of Shounen Jump and is not afraid to reference it everytime he needs to put his manga into place. This series is not afraid to represent Japanese social reality in its pages that it’s hard to divorce Japanese culture from its pages. It captures the vibrant and ever changing soul of Japan hence to appropriate or to even translate the series to another culture or language compromises Gintama’s soul.

Panels from the Viz edition of Gin Tama. Catherine was based from Cat's Eye, another Jump title.

Personally, I understand why Viz even picked up the title. It’s a funny series, more so, an amazing story. To me, it’s possibly one of the best titles serialized in the Japanese version of Shounen Jump. Gintama’s also been receiving some following ever since the anime started and fans bear through tons of footnotes and explanations that come out in the fan subtitles of the series⁴. Some scanlations were emerging and at that time, it felt like the English-speaking fandom might be knowledgeable and mature enough to understand some of the jokes pulled in the series. Unfortunately, if they are indeed pulling Gintama off the shelves, then English-speaking world just didn’t click with Yorozuya.

If they are pulling off Gin Tama off the shelves⁵, then the series is a great reminder of how some things are better left untranslated. As a fan of Gintama, I too want the series translated however as someone who understands it in Japanese, I know that it would be impossible to port the series at 100%. A lot of us would like to think that manga has a universal appeal however, the failures of series like Gintama is a reminder that sometimes, some manga just don’t have an international audience in mind.

I’m quite curious if Gintama suffered the same in other international editions. So I’d like some readers (outside of the US) does your country translate Gintama? If they do, how were the translations? Was it successful or did it wrap up like Gin Tama did?

1. From here then on I will refer to Gintama as the Japanese version while Gin Tama as the VIZ releases
2. which kind of kills the jokes, doesn’t it?
3. and even that is quite questionable since different kids have different tastes
4. I must confess, even reading the fansubs of this series is half as good unless you don’t have a deep understanding of the Japanese context
5. this could be just a joke after all. Gintama‘s very fond of such jokes

And so I round things up, just like before, about the fun things and the good things that I read and played with in 2007. I managed to read a lot of good new manga and reconnected with the old. :3 I did a couple of recommendations for mangacast already so we’ll just stick to the fun titles that I had fun with this year.

This year was all about Moe for me. Moe and otaku culture got me strong this year so pardon mates if these are fan-frenzied choices. :3 Maybe it’s all that toy collecting. Or maybe I’ve been reading Heisei Democracy and Ace too much. :3

Lucky Star. A story about nothing and everything. This totally got my heart ablaze especially with Konata’s Otakon (Otaku Spirit). The humor is simple although you do need some otaku knowledge to get past Konata’s jokes. I cannot stress enough how much i enjoyed watching this and how this has changed my karaoke habits forever. Must I add that I love it so much I preordered the nendoroid konata? Oh yeah. love.

Darker than Black. Bones struck gold with this one for me. It was a good well paced story with enough action to keep the fanboys going. I personally loved Hei’s team and how they stick together to the end. This really isn’t a Moe selection, but Mao’s got enough Moe for all of us. :3

Moyashimon. Bacterias talking and fermenting. I’ve been hooked on fermented items this year so to see the bacterias behind just makes my heart flutter so. I cannot resist Oryzae and for 3 months, I was wishing I had that talent to see them. But sadly I can’t. But thank god for Moyashimon. :3 Love the manga too. The covers rock.

Kekkaishi. I’ve been loving the manga for some while and now that the anime is out, I’m totally hooked every week. I love the story, the kinship between the brothers and the families that nurture and protect them. The story is well paced and I see that there’s no rush to follow to the manga (Oh yeah! No filler arcs… yet.) And if you played the DS game, oh darn it’s wicked!!

Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei. I actually started following Shonen magazine because of this. But yeah, a manic-depressive suicidal teacher and a plethora of lovely students to his call and beckon is worth getting desperate over. I enjoy this series in the sick and twisted humor way.

Lovely Complex. Ah~ High School Manzai Love. <3 <3  Seto no Hanayome. Yakuza mermaids. What more can I ask for? :3
Nodame Cantabile. Because I’m a fangirl.

Gintama. Oi. This came out last year, so why am I pimping it? Because it deserves pimping. yo. And I’m using that as a lame excuse to place this image in my website.

All in all. It was a great year. :3 A very fun year, I might add. :3  There wasn’t enough drama but there was lots of comedies this year. Or maybe I was really just choosing the comedies. :3 I hope next year would be just as fun! I look forward to next year! :3

Every year, I do a little list of the fun things I’ve read and seen during the year. And in the spirit of doing lists, I thought I’d make a list of all the things that made my hobby go further down the drain this year. These are anime and mangas I’ve read throughout the year which have made an impact in my life and will definitely be my ruin for the next few years until their series finish. lol. So, let’s look how this dear otaku’s life went down the drain this year. ;A; Drat.

Let’s start this the way the year started.

Gintama. Anime season kicked in for me when Gintama started. I’ve read Gintama before but I never managed last out with the puns since I can’t understand most of them. But they were funny nonetheless, especially with all the lunatics abound. Gintama’s ragtag yorozuya crew, their odd jobs, failed logic, and hilarious drama sketches kept me going for a lot of weeks since the anime started this spring. Gintama was my first serialized ‘raw’ experience. lol. What I mean by ‘raw’ experience is because no one is subbing it, I had to watch it week by week raw. Which is good since I’ve managed to let go of my dependence on subs. Aaaah~ Gintama. Thank you for reviving my love ofr Jump animes. <3 <3 Even if you guys had filler episodes, it’s okay, since your entire series is like a filler episode anyway. lol.

Ouran Koukou Host Club. Baby your my love!! So cute. I squeed in cuteness every Tuesday since I had to catch both Gintama and Ouran. XDD And this series was a fitting animation for the lovely Ouran tale. <3 <3 Although the ending is a bit different, in the end, it’s still about the squeeing and the fangirling and the MOE moments.The anime was also has a sawayaka (refreshing) appeal compared to the manga. I’ve read the manga before but stopped because Hatori Bisco’s art just gives me headaches. Seriously, her paneling and details explode in the pages. Albeit funny, I thought that this is not for me. ><;; I’ll leave that to those who painstakingly read them every month. I have to give her credit to her story. She’s got a great story in her hands, and I hope this series keeps up its insane humor!

NHK ni Yokoso. ???????????????????????????????????????????(????????????)???????????????????????????????????? !!!!!!??????Here’s NHK. One of my most favorite otaku mangas being translated into anime by… gonzo. If this weren’t one of my more favorite mangas this year, I really wouldn’t bother. Gonzo’s rendition of NHK destroyed the high energy that the manga had. The anime became more laidback than it were obsessive. But later on, I realized that they did this to stress the hikkikomori lifestyle of Satou – how painfully slow and solitary these days go. I must give dibs to Pearl Kyoudai for making great songs as BG for the series. That at least brought more life to the series. On the animation end, well… what do you expect. It was made by gonzo.

Mushishi. Ahhh. Mushishi. I have no qualms about this series. It’s well animated and the story is held together by the mystique of Ginko and his invisible friends. This could have outrightly won as the best thing I’ve laid my eyes on this year, but no… not even Ginko’s mushishi world could sway me to what was coming next. It was great, nonetheless. Great animation. Great story telling. Great premise. Great anime.

Nodame Cantabile (drama). mukyaaaaa!! (????????????) I can watch this series over and over again and be grateful for the great casting call on this great great manga. The story takes a slightly different turn in the drama, with the actors trying to push the characters further. I would say, they all played the “what if” card. “What if Chiaki managed to show his emotions?” could have been something that Tamaki Hiroshi thought of when he tried to put on a Chiaki mask. At first it felt weird, but in the end, it turned out quite great. Of course, we can’t forget Ueno Juri who was simply Nodame. She breathed Nodame’s character that she made it her own. The end result between these two talents (along with other set of loony actors) made a great drama adaptation of my favorite josei manga. <3 <3 Hard critic as I am with series that are personal to me, I think this is one of the better manga to drama adaptations out there. So catch it!!

Other series that caught my eye this year was Death Note. I would have chosen Death Note if I didn’t like the manga’s outcome so much. But the animation to this manga is, without a doubt, superior! But I just really hate the ending. I suck. ><;; OTL. The next one is Black Lagoon, which I really really love but I didn’t love it enough to check it out. Black Lagoon’s thrilled has died out with all the intense action animes I’ve seen in my life. We’ve seen chicks gun it out before. What else is new? I have yet to wait how Katekyo Hitman Reborn fleshes out as well. It looks promising. I enjoyed the manga a lot hopefully, it doesn’t fall the same fate as its bigger brothers, Bleach and Naruto. Boooo… Pumpkin Scissors is also a promising series. I hope these series pull it off next year.

Now that we got into speaking about next year, it’s great to look on things to look forward to next year! Well, there’s the Nodame Anime coming out to start the year so that’s something to look forward to. I’m not really the type to hunt for Japanese anime since I prefer reading mangas over them. But this year, quite a lot of what I love in manga came out on the TV so it can’t be helped.

I hope next year’s a great year for animation and manga!! Let’s hope for better year people!!

(*^???^)/??????:*:??????HAPPY NEW YEAR???:*:?????????(^???^*)