ANIME TODAY Discusses Manga, Sayonara, Mr. Fatty & More With Vertical Marketing Director Ed Chavez
Posted on: Friday, June 19, 2009
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Episode run down:
Summer's already beating down on us in Iowa which means a few of things: 1) Anime Expo's only a few weeks away, 2) many anime and manga companies are preparing for some fantastic announcements, and 3) We're that much closer to tasting some delicious Iowa sweet corn. Mmmmmmmm :) Anyway, focusing on point 2, we're pleased to welcome Vertical's new Marketing Director, Ed Chavez, to this episode to discuss some highlights and new additions to their exciting catalog of manga, novels and other contemporary Japanese books.
The featured music for this episode is from the CD World's end wonderland by TOKYO ethmusica. Created by longtime Japanese music producer Daichi Hayakawa, each track mixes the styles of Tokyo pop with other ethnic musical elements. Daichi is also half of the J-Pop sensation Sweet Vacation, who's energetic CDs we featured back in episode 87. Thanks to JapanFiles.com for letting us feature music from the World's end wonderland CD. A full list with the times each song was played will be posted at the bottom of this episode’s show notes at AnimeToday.com.
What's Hot in the World of Anime and Manga is up first with Chad followed by the first of our three part interview with Ed Chavez of Vertical. Then get ready for Shawne's Royal Deals on books and more from Dark Horse Comics.
Nick and Rich will have the winner of our latest Otaku contest, and the details on the next one. Then, we return for the second part of our interview with Ed Chavez, followed by Lisa Marie pointing her spotlight at the Sand Chronicles graphic novels. There’s a number of conventions coming up in late July and early August, and Nick and Rich will bring you a rundown of them. Ed then continues his discussion us on what future projects Vertical has in store for their fans. And finally, we’ll wrap up this episode with a number of customer reviews from RightStuf.com.
What's Hot?
Powerful monsters called Yoma roam the lands, preying on humans to ease their hunger. There is only one thing that can stop them: Claymores. Part human, part yoma, Claymores possess extraordinary strength and cunning, delivering salvation to humanity by the edge of a sword.
This final volume brings an end to the story of Clare, a Claymore who battles for both revenge and redemption. But when vengeance is at hand, will she find what she has been looking for all these years?
Witness the last stand when Claymore DVD 6 stalks in on July 14th.
Hayate Ayasaki’s parents have always been a burden to him. Lazy, unemployed gamblers, they think nothing of squandering Hayate’s hard-earned cash. This time, however, they’ve gone too far and left him with a 156,804,000 yen loan to pay off for them. What’s a young man to do?!
It looks as though he’s on his way to a solution when he meets Nagi Sanzenin, the lone heir to the vast Sanzenin fortune. Through a bizarre series of events, Hayate finds himself generously employed as Nagi’s butler. What Hayate quickly discovers, though, is the rich don’t live the same way as normal people.
Prepare for first-class service when Hayate the Combat Butler DVD Part 1 arrives on July 21st.
Shinichiro’s classmate and lifelong friend Hiromi moved in with his family when her father suddenly died. Since then, she's bottled up her feelings and has become cold and unsmiling. Shinichiro wants to cheer her up but doesn't know how.
And if struggling to help Hiromi wasn’t enough of a challenge, Shinichiro unexpectedly meets an odd girl named Noe, while she is perched up in a tree. Rumors swirl around her, and when a tragic event occurs, Noe sheds no tears. She explains that she gave away all her tears, and she's searching for someone to give them back to her.
Will Shinichiro wipe away Hiromi's sorrows and find a way for Noe to regain her true tears? Find out when True Tears DVD Complete Series streets on July 21st.
Amidst the chaos of World War II, two Japanese sailors hear of Zephyrus, an utterly captivating woman in the South Pacific. Many years have since passed, and now Zephyrus has resurfaced in Japan, wielding her mysterious power over all men to exact revenge for their crimes against women since the beginning of time. Gohonmatsu Seki is the only man with the ability to resist her allure, but even he seems ill-equipped to save his gender...
Discover the victor in this battle of the sexes when the Swallowing the Earth Graphic Novel hits shelves on June 24th.
Two orphaned children struggle for survival in the Japanese countryside following a World War II bombing, only to find that facing the helplessness and indifference of their countrymen is even more painful to endure than enemy raids.
The children’s lives are as heartbreakingly fragile as their spirit and love is inspiring. Grave of the Fireflies is a tale of the true tragedy of war and innocence lost, not only of the abandoned young, but of an entire nation.
Revisit the Grave of the Fireflies DVD this July 7th.
Ed Chavez – Marketing Director, Vertical
VERTICAL: http://www.vertical-inc.com/
See all the VERTICAL books in our online store: http://www.rightstuf.com/g/bookpub-vertical
Shawne's Specials and the Royal Deals sale!
See all of Shawne's Weekly Specials!
Check out the Bargain Bin!
Right Stuf Contests and Updates
And to celebrate this month’s release of the Gakuen Alice anime and the grand opening of the official series site, Right Stuf and Nozomi are excited to team up with TOKYOPOP and offer fans a chance to win one of four (4) copies of the Gakuen Alice manga that have been autographed by Tachibana Higuchi, the series’ creator!
To enter, visit gakuenalice.rightstuf.com and click on the “enter the contest banner” just below the site’s main window. Get your entry in before the end of the day on June 30th, but first, be sure to explore the site! You’ll find the new series trailer and in-depth character profiles, plus exclusive Gakuen Alice avatars and desktop wallpapers! Remember: The Gakuen Alice DVD Collection – which includes all 26 episodes of the anime series – arrives on June 30, and there’s still time to place your pre-order!
Check out the Gakuen Alice site and enter the Contest!
Congratulations to our Otaku Week #11 winner! Sandra L. of El Paso, Texas won a copy of the Bleach: Shattered Blade video game for the Nintendo Wii!
And congratulations to our Week #12 winner, Matthew S. of Cedar Rapids, Iowa! You’ll soon receive Trigun Anime Manga Graphic Novels 1 and 2 from Dark Horse!
For this week’s contest, fans will have the chance to win an Ikki Tousen figure by Yujin!
To enter for this week’s contest – and see a picture of the prize – visit otaku.rightstuf.com for more information and get your entry to us by the end of the day on June 25, 2009. And keep checking back: The next contest after that kicks off on June 26th! We’ll announce the both sets of winners both via Twitter and on the next episode of Anime Today!
Enter the "Weekly Prize Blitz" Contest!
But wait! There’s more! FUNimation and Right Stuf are teaming up to offer fans the chance to be transported back to the time of Prohibition and a place where the backdoor booze joints, dames and mobsters you expect to find collide with alchemists and their quest for an elixir that promises eternal youth! It’s Baccano! And the three winners of this contest will receive a Baccano! starter set featuring DVD 1 and a collectors’ art box. To enter, visit our Contest page in the “What’s Hot bar at RightStuf.com before July 16th. We’ll announce the winner during the episode 97 of Anime Today!
Marie's Spotlight
When things are going well, it’s only natural to wish you could stop time; freeze it at that moment of happiness and never let anything change. When things are going poorly, you wish you could reverse time, take back everything and start again. But like the grains of sand in an hourglass, time always marches on. Sand Chronicles takes this simple truth and runs with it, chronicling time’s passage for four friends and the changes in their lives in gripping dramatic form.
Shortly after 12-year-old Ann’s parents get divorced, she and her mother move across the country from Tokyo to live with her grandparents in rural Shimane. Urban Ann is dismayed with her new small-town home, where the mall is non-existent, her grandmother rules the house with an iron fist, and everyone seems far too interested in the new girl in town for comfort. However, she soon makes friends with Daigo, a neighbor and a country boy through and through, and Fuji and Shika, the son and daughter of the town’s most wealthy family, and she slowly starts adjusting. Ann’s mother, on the other hand, is not, and it’s not long before she decides she just can’t handle things anymore, leaving Ann desperately in need of her new friends’ support. The rest of the series follows the four as they grow up, form relationships, and then see those relationships tested by life’s inevitable ups and downs.
Though undeniable, it’s difficult to properly explain Sand Chronicles’s appeal. The drama is compelling without a doubt, and cliffhangers abound, leaving me always anxious to find out where time has taken the characters in each successive chapter. But Sand Chronicles also has a laidback, nostalgic, and even melancholy air, regardless of whether or not you personally grew up in rural Japan. It’s one of the few shojo titles I feel skews up demographically; that is, older readers will probably enjoy the series more than those still in middle and high school. In high school, you’d rather live in the moment than contemplate the inevitability of change. By the time you’ve graduated college, it’s a fact of life.
The plot flows easily along, mixing the authentic air of a biography with cleverly scripted drama. Though Daigo’s the only one of the four with a remotely normal homelife, the plot never feels contrived. Rather, it's like manga-ka Hinako Ashihara is simply relating how things happened. She doesn’t rely on the usual bag of shojo tricks and clichés I’m familiar with, making her story unpredictable. On the other hand, if you’re familiar at all with human nature, it’s only natural that things should develop as they do. On top of that, her characters are so real and relatable that she keeps you coming back for more every time. Sand Chronicles took Nana’s place in Shojo Beat once the latter title got too racy for magazine racks, and it’s easy to see why. Despite the completely different characters and setting, both follow a group of friends by circumstance and never flinch away from the consequences of actions either big or small – and some of those actions are indeed pretty big.
Hinako Ashihara’s art is polished no matter what the scene, but it shines brightest when portraying the change of the seasons, so much so that I’m reminded of the quest to capture spring, summer, winter and fall on paper in classic Japanese art and poetry. A close second is the natural way Ann and the others age throughout the series. It’s always easy to see exactly who’s who and how they’ve changed and how they haven’t, and the years’ experiences show in their clear expressions. I was surprised to read the author’s short biography at the end and notice that Hinako Ashihara was also the author of Forbidden Dance, which I quite enjoyed but would never have associated with Sand Chronicles. Both her art and her storytelling have matured - and her series have gotten noticeably longer.
Since it takes place in the countryside – and a countryside with no aliens, robots, or anything else like that - Sand Chronicles shows a different side of Japan than many readers may be familiar with. Rather than shopping and clubbing we see rabbit hunting and dog rodeos, and it’s not just transfer students that are interesting, it’s anyone new in town at all. City girl Ann is frequently shocked, including a memorable scene at Daigo’s when she’s invited for dinner only to discover that she’s eating freshly killed deer and can only think of the tame animals at Nara Park. Fortunately for readers who are even less familiar with rural Japan than Ann, Viz has provided extensive cultural notes in the back of each volume explaining the many Japanese traditions, references, and jokes.
Bridging the gap between shojo and josei, the closest parallel I can think of for Sand Chronicles is to imagine Nana’s dramatic characters by way of Aria’s careful attention to setting all in the Japanese countryside, but even that doesn’t really do it justice. Highly recommended to all fans of drama and anyone who’s ever moved to a new town.
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Music this episode featured from:
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World's end wonderland by TOKYO ethmusica
JapanFiles.com: MP3s
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0:00:00 --- 05. Pieces of Times
0:02:36 --- 02. Life is Art
0:06:19 --- 09. Too Many Wishes
0:22:53 --- 08. Here Before feat yuyun
0:24:57 --- 01. World's end wonderland
0:27:26 --- 09. Too Many Wishes
0:57:04 --- 07. Cry for Soul feat N Ashid
1:02:55 --- 03. A Marriage Song feat Meguru Azumino
1:04:39 --- 09. Too Many Wishes
1:12:47 --- 04. A Small Prayer feat Miu Sakamoto
1:16:18 --- 06. Noisy Fly
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