The Shigurui (Death Frenzy) manga is now complete. The beautifully terrible story of two exceptional samurai in a world of politics, betrayal and cultural conditioning, locked in absolute rivalry, has ended with the 84th chapter, Pure Crimson. There is an anime with the same subject, I've also seen it and it is really great, even if it stops dead after 11 episodes. I actually recommend to watch the anime and then continue with the chapters in the manga, in order to understand better the feeling of the story. It must be said that the translation from a book written by a war veteran to a graphic novel by a mangaka 58 years his young and then translated to TV anime has not lost, but gained insight and emotion.

One can read the entire manga at MangaFox.

I quite liked this anime series, one which combined with success the typical demon slaying organisation with a background of describing the culture and history of Japan. In that regard it is quite similar to Ruruoni Kenshin, but without the romantic side and a bit more supernatural.

The plot is set somewhere in the middle of the 19th century, when a government official decided to create an organization to defeat Youi, or demons. These people are called the Ayashi. The main character is a guy that has the power to extract weapons and other useful tools from the names of things. It is a beautiful concept, since in Japanese the characters are very complex, have a lot of meanings and have a habit of evolving through history. Usually a demon can be defeated with a weapon made from it's name, which usually holds extra significance as to what the demon's reason to be is.

The series also describes a very feudal and disgusting Japan, where people are constrained to ridiculous levels by etiquette, social ladder, politics or gender. Many a time, to ensure the survival of their little group, their leader resorts to despicable acts which the team performs with disgust, but a complete lack of choice. Women are treated as commodities, low rank people as livestock, while the rich and powerful engage in complex political struggles to ensure their survival. Scholars are being imprisoned for studying Western concepts, foreigners are considered a bane that people should not come across, while people without a family name and land are tatooed as "floaters" and arrested if caught inside cities.

A lot of the details of the show are about Japanese customs, history and view of the world, so I naturally enjoy this as a background for a fun fighting story. Other people obviously did not think the same way, so it only has 25 episodes, even if originally 52 episodes were planned.

I haven't finished the series yet, I still have the last five episodes to see, but so far I have enjoyed it. There is a manga for it, too, but I didn't find it free online.

Stellvia is an anime with teenage kids saving the world. It starts like a kind of Harry Potter, only the main character is a girl, the academy is in space and there are no Voldermort or Slitherins in sight. All in all it was a fun series to watch, but so easy going and adolescent oriented that I am sure it will not remain in my memory for long.

The plot is simple enough: Earth was devastated by a supernova blast wave, it recovered, then it set out on a mission to defend the Solar System from the second wave, slower but deadlier. Their solution was to create a bunch of stellar academies, fill them with children trained by dedicated teachers, while the whole world stands united against this coming disaster. One can see from this plot alone that the focus is not on realism nor human nature. However, since it does touch all the Japanese topics of choice like pursuit of perfection, positive competition, love between school children and loyalty and "gabatte"-ness, it was nice to watch and I have easily enjoyed it.

Composed of 26 episodes, the series does leave room for more, like humanity exploring the stars. The aliens were never explained and the last episode does show a rebuilt Stellvia star academy with the trainees that saved the world as full students welcoming a new batch of recruits. However, it seems like a second season of Stellvia will never happen, due to creative differences.

What a sad day this is. I have been reading manga at OneManga on an almost daily basis for a few years now. I liked how you can easily find the manga you want to read, then go through it without tons of ads and crap distracting you. Today, I entered their site and this message appeared:

"There is an end to everything, to good things as well."

It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July 2010).

So what next? We're not really sure at this point, but we have some ideas we would like to try out. Until then, the One Manga forums will remain active and we encourage all of you to continue using them. OMF has developed into a great community and it would be a shame to see that disappear.

You can also show us some love in this moment of sadness by 'liking' our brand new Facebook page. It would be nice to see just how many of you came to enjoy our 'better than peanut butter and jelly' invention.


Regardless of whether you stay with us or not, on behalf of the One Manga team, I would like to thank you all for your unwavering support over the years. Through the ups and downs you have stuck with us, and that is what kept us going.

As a certain Porky was fond of saying... That's all folks!

Time for me to go lay down and let this all sink in.

- Zabi

Sure, there are a lot of free manga sites out there, but none of them had the soul of OneManga, a place where obvious passion was fueling things and not financial greed. I will soon add a post with the newest place for free manga. I will also have to update all manga links in the blog. Ugh! Nothing good seems to last forever...

The final chapter of the Fullmetal Alchemist story has been released today. Have the Elric brothers regained their bodies? Have they sacrificed everything in that Japanese way we so love? Did they get to yet another place filled with Nazis, turned vampire and got to be characters in an Uwe Boll movie? You will have to read the manga to find out! :) The good news it that following the link above you can do just that!

As you may know, the anime finished abruptly a while ago with the two brothers teleporting to our world in the middle of World War 2 and ended up in a ridiculous story. Luckily enough, the manga had none of that bullshit and continued on its merry way. Picking on that, another anime was started, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, which was supposed to delete from our memory the shame of the ending of the first anime. It is now pretty close to ending itself.

My opinion about the whole story is that it was a pretty imaginative concept, a kind of alchemic steampunk universe, filled with wonder, horror and fun stories. I hope you Read/watch it with just as much fun as I have.

Update 4th of July: The anime (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) has also ended. It covered the exact same things as the manga this time.

I also forgot to mention that the story ends with a few loose ends: Al goes to explore the East and learn Alkahestry, accompanied by the two chimera men that want their original bodies back as well; Ed is going West, trying to learn as much as possible so that he can return and complete his brother's research and then help people together; Mrs Bradley is raising the last homunculus, Selim, as her son, trying to infuse him with love and make him a good person. These three threads can lead to a possible continuation of the Alchemist story. At least, I hope they do.

From all the animes that I've watched, Cowboy Bebop must be in the top three or five. It was an imaginative mix of space sci-fi and film noir, jazz and fight movies. The director of said anime, Shinichirō Watanabe, also did another anime called Samurai Champloo that I just finished watching. It is an imaginative mix of samurai era and Tarantino movies, hip hop and gangster movies. Even if it is sort of formulaic, this recipe for animes produced some pretty cool results. I thoroughly enjoyed the series and, at the end of the 26Th and last episode, I was crying for more.

The story revolves around three characters: a young girl looking for a mysterious samurai that smells of sunflowers, a samurai looking for purpose in life and a low life thug with an unconventional but deadly style of sword fighting. In the end, they meet some very dangerous people, thus ending the whole story arc. I have to say that, even if the fights in the main story arc were better and the emotions stronger, I enjoyed the other stuff, the episodes on the side, a lot more, even if most of the time they did not take themselves seriously... or maybe perhaps because of that very reason.

I completely recommend this to any anime lover, it is a nicely animated, with a cool soundtrack, and with an ingenious story.

Every time I've heard about this anime I refused to watch it for the very simple reason that the American "brand name" was Samurai X, which pretty much sucked tremendously. But, while reading a list of Shōnen anime series, I've decided to give it a try. And it, real name Ruruoni Kenshin, was a decent anime.

Staged in the beginning of the Japanese Meiji era (the reconstruction, as they call it, after American battleships forced the country to open its borders to the outside world) it features the adventures of former samurai assassin Himura Kenshin Battousai, fighting for the imperialists in the Tokugawa era, now reformed as a wandering samurai and having vowed not to kill anyone anymore. He manages this feat by using a "reverse blade" sword, which has the cutting adge on the inside. He thus manages to beat the crap out of people without actually killing them.

The series reminded me of Twilight Samurai, the movie that I liked so much, because it shows the feelings of people in the middle of great social and political change. Featuring 95 episodes, it is split in three main parts.

The first is how Kenshin moves into a sword dojo ran by a beautiful and single girl (heh!) and how they save a little boy from thugs and thus they become sort of an unofficial family. His "man slaying" past is slowly eroded by the contact with this pure hearted people. During this period he gets to fight several enemies, each stronger than the others, but keeping his vow not to kill anyone.

The second part is a large story arch in which he fights against a plot to overthrow the Meiji government and bring Japan to another period of chaos and war. The story culminates with the battle against a former "manslayer", the mastermind of the said plot.

The third part is mostly a mix of different stories that pretty much breaks the spirit of the first two parts. Instead of getting better, it grinds to a stop and then even gets worse. In this section he gets to fight "Feng Shui" masters and participate in all kind of filler episodes.

I felt that the series had a very nice feel to it, so I would recommend anime fans to watch it, but with the third part optional. There are also several OVAs that I am yet to watch. Happy viewing!

Update: I have watched the 6 OVAs and I was blown away. There are 4 episodes that make up an "origin story" for Kenshin, then a fifth episode which kind of summarises the series (badly) and then an ending that is both positive and extremely sad (in that typical Japanese suicidal way :) ). The animation is way more mature, the plots more complex, the characters have real feelings and there is no comedy whatsoever, getting back to that good feeling I had when I started to watch the series. Also the audience is different: the battles are realistic, with wounds and lots of blood, no magical mambo-jambo, while the characters behave more traditionally, with the women being more passive and the men more closed up.

All in all, the origin story makes the series seem childish at best, however I would recommend it being watched after seeing the series, just as I did.

A while ago I was writing of the ending of the anime series, well before the story in the manga, leaving me wanting more. Well, a new series has been started that continues the plot. The English translated first episode of Inuyasha Kanketsu-hen has been released on the 4th of October 2009.

Avatar is one of those animation series that you read about and think they're crap. I mean, first of all they are not Japanese :), they are actually US. And then they are shown on Nickelodeon and then they are about and for kids. I must be honest when I tell you that I accidentally heard about the series and I had no great hopes for it. However, as it turned out, it is a great show, one to be watched and enjoyed.

The show is mostly inspired from Chinese mythology, with Western and Indian bits thrown in when required. The world is separated into four nations. The people of each nation can control in various degrees a specific element magic: air, water, earth or fire. Unlike say, Naruto, there are no people that can control or mix more than one magic type, except a special and unique person, the Avatar. The Avatar has the job of protecting the world and, if killed, reincarnates into another person. The last Avatar, though, dissapeared a century before the show starts and no one has heard of him or any of its reincarnations. Meanwhile, the evil Fire Lord has started a war to conquer the world and he is about to succeed.

Well, you can see where this is going, right? The Avatar comes back, he is a goofy kid, and in the end he saves the world together with his friends. However, the animation, the stories and the teachings in this show are all high value and, for once, something a kid can see, enjoy, understand and USE in the real world. Well, all except the magic part :)

What is also great about the series is that it is not a work in progress. It did not end because the ratings went down or the economic crisis hit or whatever and it has very few filler episodes. It was a long consistent script that span three seasons of 20 episodes each and then ended with no significant loose ends.

In other words, this is one of those rare American shows that can rival the best Japanese anime series. Even my wife enjoyed watching it (well, most of the time).

I usually don't like Mecha anime, with silly robots fighting battles that make no sense. I also dislike the Ecchi style, where young almost preteen boys and girls fall in love or are dressed in a sexual manner, with no sense either. At first, this is what Guren Lagan seemed to be. However it evolved into something else, and there is a pun in this phrase.

The series revolves around the "spiral power" (enough with the puns already!), the power of evolution, which allows people to get to new heights every time they meet an obstacle. Even if the animation was pretty basic and the story about always shouting robotic pilots that power their machines with the strength of their souls (geez! :) ), I just have to give it points for rapidly changing form and evolving in style.

We follow a bunch of "villagers" escaping from their underground almost stoneage dwelling and getting to the surface, where, in the course of 7 years, reach another universe and destroy the very beings intent on annihilating humanity with a robotic starship. Now that's fast :)

However, this is not it. What began as a simple courageous brawl twisted into a story about friendship, then despair, then rebuilding, going through the unforgiving politics of unintelligent human masses and ending with a galactic... no, universal battle for the survival of the human race, all in 27 episodes. I say not bad! I was expecting to see tens of episodes going nowhere and then ending suddenly when the funding was gone, but no, it was a complete story, evolving from the level of 7 year olds up to almost adult (in a timescale sense :P) level.

So watch it, it might surprise you. Prepare yourselves for really corny dialogs and a rather simple animation, though. Oh, also, you might find a Guren-hen movie that is like a summary of what happened from episodes 1 to 11 in the series. If you have watched the series already, the movie is made of fragments of it, so you don't need to watch it. If you are in a hurry and you have seen neither, watch the movie, then the series from episode 12 upwards.

A while ago I saw the anime Fullmetal Alchemist and I was really starting to like it. An interesting melange of dark horror, funny kid stuff and magic in a very consistent alternate universe. Unfortunately the anime ended, in a somewhat unsatisfactory way.

Enter Brotherhood. This is the "continuation" of the original series to match the progress of the manga. I believe it will quickly tell the story up until the end, then ignore the previous ending and continue in a new way. Unfortunately I already know what is going to happen, having read the manga, and also don't especially like that storyline either. I hope it will not suck like Berserk did. After a brilliant start it just failed utterly.

Anyway, hopefully the anime story arches will be more interesting than those in the manga.

After a very long wait, one destined to only increase expectations on this movie, the second adolescent Naruto movie, Bonds, reached me. Well, as with any high expectations they were destined to breed disappointment, but I think beyond that, this movie was bad in an objective way.

I mean, yeah, Sasuke and Naruto meet once again in the face of the most pathetic enemy yet. They didn't even try with this one. After a sneak Pearl Harbour attack from some weird ninjas, a four people team kicks their asses completely. Meanwhile, Naruto is fighting with Reibi, the 0-tails (I know Japanese are masters of zero-based numbering and logic, but this is ridiculous) and the master of Dark chakra. Guess what? He kicks their asses. But it was so ridiculously easy. Was Sasuke even required?

On the emotional level, it was like an atom bomb. I feel I can do anything, so I do it. And that's it. Big bang, no subtlety whatsoever. Not that Naruto is known for subtlety, but there are limits.

And on the animation... it all seemed so mechanical, unchiseled.

Bottom line: bad movie. Even worse since I waited so long for it. I can imagine a two episode mini arch in the series doing the same job, but better. It's not unwatchable, just disappointing. :(

Update: the manga is now completed, after 65 chapters. The ending was a bit disappointing, but at least it didn't drag on for ages like in other situations.

You can read Pluto, by Naoki Urasawa, up to chapter 62 on onemanga.com. It is updated often and I found it impossible to stop reading. The entire story is placed in a possible future where people and high intelligence robots coexist. There are only a few robots that have human like appearance and intelligence, and they are just beginning to understand feelings. A terrible killer is destroying them one by one, though. Who is he and what does he want?

I can hardly talk about the plot without spoiling it for you, but I can speak about my own impressions. Even if the logic/science in the series is not very consistent, the overall feeling is of great attention to detail, especially since the science is not as important as the philosophical perspective on consciousness and the soul. The drawing is also very carefully done and many of the slides are in color, as well. The plot is fascinating and it belongs to the group of stories the Japanese are so good at: the perils of too much power and the discovery of one's own limits.

I highly recommend this to lovers of manga and scifi alike. I will try to get the anime for Monster and I will probably get into reading the manga as well.

Another pearl in the anime pond. One just has to dive and grab this fairy tale and watch it. Seirei no Moribito is the story of a female bodyguard, bound by honor and personal history to defend a child prince from the assassins sent by his father, the emperor. The anime is not really a fighting anime, though, no one battles for the sake of battle. More than that, the "ona yojimbo" has vowed to save lives, not take them, so she never kills anyone. All characters in the story are clearly drawn up, with their own particularities and personal motivations to do things and in the end, there is even a eco green moral. :)

My advice it to watch it, as it is both a beautiful story, as well as a complex one, fit for both adults and young children. Only 26 episodes, but it is worth it. I would really like to see animes for the rest of the books in the series. You can also read the first two chapters of the manga at Mangafox.

Dennou Coil is a cross between Ghost in the Shell and Tonari no Totoro. How can it be possible? Simple! First remove all that usual Japanese obsession with boys in high schools (you know, everything happends to some high school children, usually boys, all in the same class, maybe some opinionated women, they fight, they grow in "level", etc). Instead use girls in elementary school. Then move it in some future world where people merged the real world with the virtual, and add cute creatures like from Tonari no Totoro (and the girls) in the virtual world! Yatta! :)

Anyway, getting more serious now, the anime is really nice. The Augmented Reality concept is pretty cool and (even if towards the end it gets a little spiritual and unnecessarily action like) stays pretty consistent. Imagine wearing clear glasses that add to your usual display of reality information like virtual pets, virtual laptops, keyboards and displays, maps of your current location and so on.

The children are all drawn towards a strange phenomenon that adults seem to regard as fantasy, called Dennou Coil, where the consciousness of people gets transferred to a virtual nether world via the quantum circuits in the glasses.

Towards the end, adults try to confiscate the glasses from the children and, after a hearty discourse about how real things can be touched, I thought the whole cool idea of the series would be perverted towards some social goal of keeping children "real", but it was not so. You will have to watch the series to know what I mean :)

Bottom line: pretty interesting and captivating. A little too childish, but without resorting to silly behaviour or self referential comedy that I see so much lately in animes. The anime has only 26 episodes, with little chance of more. The manga itself is complete as well. Couldn't find the manga free online. If you know where to find it, leave me a comment.

Recommendation: watch it!