Vance’s recommendation to read Battle Royale turned out to be an excellent suggestion. He was also kind enough to loan me his personal copy, which will serve as the basis for my review.
Battle Royale is an intense thriller written by author Koushun Takami and originally released amid controversy in Japan in 1999. It was ultimately popular and successful enough to be later adapted into both the manga and film mediums. VIZ Media handled the localization for the State-side release. With the exception of a few typos, I felt like they did an excellent job with the translation and writing.
Battle Royale is staged in an eerie alternate Japan gripped by a strong-arm dictatorship known as the Republic of Greater East Asia. The Republic has developed the "Program," a twisted battle simulation in which entire classes of high school students are inserted into a controlled environment where they are forced to kill each other to survive.
Takami leads us through a gritty trail of terror, betrayal, and death as the students of Shiroiwa Third-Year Class B come to grips with their situation. Some follow the familiar "kill or be killed" paradigm while others unite under uncertain bonds of trust. Like any good Japanese fiction, no characters are one dimensional, although the impassive Kazuo Kiriyama comes close. Every character is developed in some form either before or shortly after their unfortunate demise.
While reading, I couldn’t help but feel like Takami is taking a long, hard look at the political and social climate that lead Japan into World War II. Battle Royale is clearly a work of fiction, but it is deeply rooted in some very real fears of oppression that I think many of us carry around every day.
A shiny, new SN25P arrived from Shuttle today via UPS. I was a little surprised to see a complete boxed system, rather than just the replacement motherboard I had requested. Shuttle’s decision to ship a full retail box made the process of transferring components from system to system much easier. After booting the system and running it through its paces, I’m happy to report that the new motherboard did the trick and I now have full use of the onboard VIA Envy24PT audio. Yay!
I’ve been following the US localization of the D.N.Angel manga series very closely since its initial release, largely because I was quite taken with the anime series. The domestic releases of the manga series have generally lived up to my expectations set forth by the anime series.
Volume 7 takes the series through the "Second Hand of Time" ark. It’s probably my least favorite part of the series, and it can be somewhat frustrating to wade through as the greater plot seems to halt as the author delves into the substory.
Earlier volumes of D.N.Angel featured a fair number of noticeable differences between the manga series and the anime series, but the Second Hand of Time sequence plods along in much the same fashion in both mediums. It still makes for enjoyable reading, but I will be looking for things to pick up with the next volume.
I came across this little gem in Books-A-Million the other day while browsing the manga section as I usually do in bookstores these days.
I’’s is a another comedy-romance series. It doesn’t break much new ground in the premise. You’ve got your bumbling guy and at least two gorgeous girls for him to pursue. The first volume concentrates heavily on one Iori Yoshizuki, but an old love interest has already been introduced by the end of the first volume. Where I’’s stands alone is in it’s unique style and skillful execution.
Masakazu Katsura’s artwork has a definitive style; I recognized it immediately from time spent browsing online galleries. Katsura’s style comes across as a bit more natural than some of the exaggerated features typical of Japanese manga. The exaggerated emotion is all still there, so you don’t lose any of the manga flavor, but the style of I’’s sets it apart from your typical manga series.
Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised with the first volume of I’’s. I was enthralled by a charming set of characters and Katsura’s unique style. Better yet, Viz has priced their new Shonen Jump Advanced line, of which I’’s is a part, at $7.99, a good 20% cheaper than the going rate for localized manga.
We celebrated Cinco de Mayo in proper fashion as Frontera catered a lunch buffet for all of BarcoView. The buffet proceeded much like a Mexican-American rendition of the salad bar, with numerous ingredients available to roll your own concoctions. I constructed a couple of soft tacos and went about enjoying some excellent free cuisine. There was plenty of food for seconds, even though the vast majority of BarcoView turned out for the event.
I’ve been working at Barco for less than two months and this is the third food-related event we’ve had. We were served free ice cream a couple weeks ago and we’re due for free Subway in another couple of weeks. It’s a pleasant surprise coming from my internship, where we rarely enjoyed such company-sponsored events. If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to meet some people you otherwise wouldn’t encounter in your day to day routine.
