A Gathering of Guest Posts

August 1st, 2010

I’ve been out all day, but that doesn’t mean you have to go a day without me. ^_^

On David Welsh’s Manga Curmudgeon, I was honored to be allowed to review Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime. You can find my review here: http://precur.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/guest-review-book-girl-and-the-suicidal-mime/ Short version: I liked it a lot.

Out in the wider world of comics, my monthly column at Hooded Utilitarian, “Overthinking Things” this month is a Portrait of Compulsion (in 140 characters or less.) I love writing for HU, I get to really indulge my wankery pretentious side. ^_^

Of course I hope you enjoy reading these, as much as I enjoy writing them!

5 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    BTW, sicne you’re way more up on the latest comics released in Japanese than anyone else I know, I’d like to know what you think of “Our Alliance – A Lasting Partnership”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10851195 (I found out about it here)

    http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/japan/u-s-japan-security-alliance-campaign-gets-comic-relief-1.113258 (I found this after searching for the title)

    http://www.usfj.mil/Manga/

    What if they’d had a girl USA-kun or USA-chan make friends with a boy or girl Arai Anzu?

    What if they’d remembered that “cockroach” has been used by some armed humans to describe other humans humans before?

  2. Anonymous says:

    Oh, and what if the USA-kun character wasn’t that white?

  3. @Anonymous – I do know about the comic, thanks. :-)

    Your questions are unanswerable. The answer to “what if it were different?” is always “then it would be different.”

  4. Anonymous says:

    “Your questions are unanswerable. The answer to “what if it were different?” is always “then it would be different.””

    …and then how would the *results* be different? ;)

    The United States military isn’t telling a story in manga format simply for the sake of telling a story in manga format and leaving readers thinking “I just read a manga”. It’s telling a story in manga format for the sake of having a *further* effect on readers. That’s actually pretty common

    In this particular case of media used to communicate with another instead of simply to express oneself, the media user is trying to encourage the primary audience of readers (residents of Japan literate in Japanese) to think “America’s better than I thought” or “the U.S. military is here to help” or whatever as well as “I just read a manga”.

  5. @Anonymous – Here’s another social cue that fans miss. When people say, “No comment” “Or that is unanswerable” it’s a cue to stop asking, because you are not going to get an answer. It’s pretty obvious you already have an opinion, I see no reason to weigh in with mine. I don’t have political conversations, about manga or not. My answer is feel free to write your own blog post on your own site about *your* opinion on this.

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