Otaku Champloo

Tag: shounen jump

  • Peeking into 2013 Manga Taishou Nominees

    I think I’m going to make a habit of this feature given this award has actually given me fruitful readings from last year. I personally have no regrets reading some of these titles and the likes of Aku no Hana (Flowers of Evil) and I am a Hero have become my favorite reads from last year. Of course, Silver Spoon is always a welcome casual read (but I really prefer Hyakusho Kizoku!) but all in all the Manga Taisho list is always interesting.

    I’ve been on standby since last week for any announcements knowing it’s the “season” where the nominees are out. So I’m grateful that I was advised last night that the Manga Taishou list is out and now it’s a good time to figure out who might win it. I do wonder if any of you guys have read some of these. Hopefully, a good number of these titles will get licensed as well.

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  • 25 Years of Toei Philippines

    25 Years of Toei Philippines

    While I often complain that the Philippines does not have a rich localized manga industry like Singapore and Indonesia, we do have a very rich history in animation.

    Some of you may have heard of members of Pixar coming from our shores, but for all the local otaku out there, did you know that Toei animation has been in Manila for 25 years?

    Last Nov. 16, Toei celebrated their 25th anniversary in the Philippines, sharing the works that they’ve done all these years as well as some goodies (in fact, A LOT OF AWESOME merchandise!). Currently, Toei Manila is working on Precure, Toriko, and One Piece. Their animation history extends as far as Dragon Ball, Sailormoon, Kinnikuman, Hokuto no Ken, and Voltes V (The Philippine Fan favorite). Almost all of these titles have had their chances in being shown in local television.

    Seeing the event reminded me of all the anime that was generously shown in local TV. I suppose, it’s not much of a surprise that Filipinos immediately associate Japan with anime rather than manga because most Filipinos encountered Japan through television… and World War II… but we’ll get to that later.

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  • There are some things meant only for Japan

    There are some things meant only for Japan

    As soon as the new season of the Gintama anime started, I noticed a couple of tweets asking whether the Gin Tama ((From here then on I will refer to Gintama as the Japanese version while Gin Tama as the VIZ releases)) manga was cancelled since the US Viz release of the 23rd volume was declared as the final volume. The manga is still going strong in Japan and when I checked my 23rd 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?

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  • Shueisha ventures into BL with BL-ink

    Shueisha ventures into BL with BL-ink

    I thought that this has got to be the funniest joke but it turns out, it was no joke at all.

    I’ve seen this being tweeted for some while but it wasn’t long until I finally saw the commercial for Shueisha’s new quarterly BL magazine (under its subsidiary Homesha), BL-ink.

    But don’t they have Weekly Shounen Jump already?

    I know. It’s crazy. But it seems Weekly Shounen Jump is not the “Sweet BL” that BL-ink is trying to offer. The magazine is a dedicated BL magazine for Homesha and I think this is perhaps an outright acceptance of the popularity of BL. ((strangely, the niconico video has only been seen by 1000++ people!))

    What I found interesting was it took some google powers to find the site. It’s mostly mentioned as BLink which doesn’t come out much in searches. Looking at Shueisha’s website doesn’t even announce the magazine (or at least I didn’t see it.) I had to find the websites of actual authors in the magazine to actually figure out that it should be searched as BL-ink to finally find the proper search term for the said magazine.

    As I mentioned, BL-ink will be sold more under Homesha, but it’s inevitable to not associate this publishing firm with Shueisha. In fact, in the advertisements, they would proudly put the banner of Shueisha as if it’s quite important and crucial that Shueisha’s involved in this. After all, the company has had a love affair with fujōshi especially with Shounen Jump.

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  • A trufax theme for all Shounen Jump fans

    A trufax theme for all Shounen Jump fans

    Listen to “Oh Shounen Jump!”

    I didn’t believe this at first but my good Japanese friend gave me a copy of a song, a fervent anthem for Shounen Jump! I don’t know if this is a real song but it seems to be sung by a real band named ザ・ブレッスン・フォア. They seem to have sung other anime songs such as Combattler V theme and the Kamen Rider theme.

    The song is actually quite amusing and captures the spirit of the magazine’s kickass nature. So it tells you to share a punch or two with your siblings and never give up when you fall. Well, what do you expect from a song about Shounen Jump?

    Enjoy listening to it. It’s quite a treat!

    For those who wants to sing it, here are the lyrics. Sorry if I don’t translate it to romaji. A little pressed for time here. But for those who can read, enjoy!
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  • Oh My Jump Heroines

    How do you like your Shounen Jump heroine?

    Do you love her dressed in a pristine school uniform, where her smiling face (and possibly panties or if your lucky, cleavage) grace every panel? Do you like her making bentou for the hero, sharing laughs right before he enters the greatest of his greatest battles? Or do you love her strong, the type who would smack the hero when he is wrong and is generally unforgiving to anyone who insults her short skirt but is soft to the hero who basically ignores her D-size bra? If she has one.

    For years, legions of Jump readers, particularly women from the Western frame of thought ((Oh yes! Orientalism plays a key part here!)), would write a post or two complaining why women in a particular Shounen Jump manga is often misrepresented. An interesting  rant came by my timeline today, a disheartened Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fan who cannot forgive Akira Amano for making cooks out her heroines. In her blog, she pines about why the female characters in Reborn have been ill-presented, nothing but dolls whose only purpose in the story was to make the boys look better.

    Yeah. Right.

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  • Jump History and Fujoshi (4): Move aside Son Goku, it’s all about Rukawa x Hiei x Kenshin. TOTALLY!

    1990 to 1994 can be considered by many as one of the strongest periods of Jump. The title that carried this period was an epic intergalactic superhuman masterpiece named Dragon Ball Z. It was so popular that no one in this world could not have encountered this anime. However, despite its popularity, the fujoshis focused their attention towards the other titles that were also great but somehow fell under the cloud of Dragon Ball Z.

    For the Fujoshi, Goku and his dragon balls did not spark a fire to their fragile fangirl hearts. Instead, they looked at the bishounens from other Jump titles. The era of androgynous men have come to an end. In this era, it was all about the handsome boys of Jump.

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  • Jump History and Fujoshi (3): Men and their Poses and Cosmos

    Jump History and Fujoshi (3): Men and their Poses and Cosmos

    For this round, we have to remember something: the girls follow where the pretty boys are. By the time our dear Fujoshi’s have been hooked line and sinker with Captain Tsubasa, they found themselves regularly reading Jump. During Jump’s heroic age, wherein most heroes had bulky bodies, serious manly faces, and crazy poses, some fangirls focused their attention on the Masami Kurumada’s epic tale of astrological proportions, Saint Seiya.

    saint seiya - hades ova covers

    The mythical backdrop of Saint Seiya provided the perfect setting for every fujoshi’s fantasy.
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  • Jump History and Fujoshi (2): Captain Tsubasa love

    1980 to 1984 marked great development and diversity in Jump. The second part of the WSJ Illustrated Guide would probably tell you more about the growth of the magazine and the rise of its future mangaka superstars.

    On our end, this period is monumental. Why? It is in this period that a bond was established between the fans of Shounen-Ai and Shounen Jump. As the authors of shounen-ai experimented with more mature themes and story lines, their fans started to starve for the genre. Unlike today wherein you have tons of mangakas for BL, there were only a select number of authors who tried to write shounen-ai. Later on, their fascination for boy stories led them on a quest to find other tales that exhibited the same potential as those that have been written by shounen-ai mangakas.

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    Their search ended with a tale of a young boy named Oozora Tsubasa and his journey to achieve his goal of representing becoming a world class football (soccer, for Americans) player.

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  • A history of the fujoshi love affair with Jump

    A history of the fujoshi love affair with Jump

    I’m sure many of you are reading through Strangerataru’s Illustrated Guide to Weekly Shounen Jump. It briefly looks into the rich history of popular and significant titles in Shounen Jump. Upon reading it, I cannot help but feel completely nostalgic. Particularly even more nostalgic with regards to how Jump has ‘nurtured’ a fujoshi culture throughout the years. A lot of the titles mentioned in the article have been been important breeding grounds for fujoshis. Whether young or old, they all started somewhere. And many of these fujoshis would start their first doujins out of inspiration from a Jump title.

    Feeling inspired, I’m writing a series of posts that looks into the relation of Jump’s top titles and how this magazines have helped culture a demographic that fantasizes their heroes as lovers. We’ll look at how Jump has unknowingly set fire unto the hearts of girls and made them grab their pens and wrote page upon page of parodies of their favorite Jump titles. Just like Strangerataru, we’ll look at it through the periods and see how they stumbled upon fujoshis, their nonchalance towards the culture, and eventually how they embraced and acknowledge their following. So, let’s look at it this way.

    1. 1968-1979: Innocent Beginnings
    2. 1980-1984: The Captain Tsubasa Fantasy
    3. 1985-1989: Men and their poses and cosmos
    4. 1990-1994: Move aside Son Goku, it’s all about Rukawa x Hiei x Kenshin. TOTALLY!
    5. 1995-1999: You can’t shake them down.
    6. 2000-present: Giving it up to fujoshis

    To start things off, we’ll look at the beginnings of Jump and the beginnings of Fujoshi culture. And so our story begins in 1968 until 1979.

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